Love in the afternoon

It was April 24, 2010, a warm and sunny day. Suz and I walked the dogs down the trail, as we do most days. We rounded a jog in the trail, headed for the waterfall. I glanced up and couldn't believe what I saw. It was a snake curled up on an ironwood tree branch extending out near the trail, about 15 feet above ground. As I looked closer, there were so many loops of snake that it must be a huge snake. Or, was it two snakes interlocked? I walked around the tree and finally saw the head of the second snake.

Apparently they were mating, in broad daylight for all to see. We coaxed the dogs out of the way - they never even noticed the snakes draped above us. I ran to get the camera. Click click. Pretty amazing. We would probably never see anything like that again. But we did. For the next week, we saw these snakes 2 more times in the same place, in the same pose, at about the same time. Then they disappeared, except we saw two snake skins hanging from the branches of that ironwood tree several days later.

Somewhere in Bittersweet Woods there are black rat snake youths roaming around, along with the parents. I'm sure we'll see some of them again - at home in Bittersweet Woods.