back yard

It's been over a year since I wrote about snakes, but I think it's time. SNAKES ON A PLANE has brought my reptile friends into the spotlight, and once again they're getting a bad rap.

I have enjoyed encounters with snakes for three decades now and still mark my years by the first snake I see in the spring. The year 2006 it was a Northern Brown Snake out in the yard, a slug, earthworm, and insect eater only 10 inches long. It turned up in some wood I was moving. I picked it up, admired it, and then placed it back under the log.