Day 735

Heavy day.

Dog woke me up at 7 which annoyed as I wanted to sleep more. Dealt with critters and crashed on the couch doing not-much till close to 10. When I had enough energy I finally did some pruning of my own with the saw and felt pretty good about it. Did some cooking and cleaning, too. Still too damned tired but things were going okay.

Then I found a second milk snake in the basement. I removed it to the edge of our property all by myself. Yesterday I blocked off the spot outside where I thought they could have got into the walls. I now see the spot where they can get into basement from the wall but have decided to leave it open another day or two in case there are more that would be otherwise stuck and dehydrate and die painfully then rot smelly.

I failed at the tongs and lidded bucket method used by the biology professor so I reverted to my plastic storage tub/lid method. Played chase-y a while because the basement is Vintage Computer Orphanage so there are many worktables packed closely. That was frustrating but finally got Nathan Scott Phillips into the container. That name is an Aqua Teen Hunger Force reference which Spouse has been using for levity.

This -second- snake in the basement pisses me off on many levels. The fact that snakes can get in at all means they didn’t replace thevapor barrier as was part of plan when basement was finished by a local contracting company some 15 years ago. They went bankrupt ages ago so nothing to be done now. So annoying. Home ownership has a significant labor investment. Also - I feel somehow less a sensible human for saying this - I have learned I just don’t care for snakes. I can deal with them but find it distasteful in a way dealing with other vermin isn’t. After it was all done I had a bit of a cry.

We had Chinese restaurant carry out for dinner though so that was good. Also I read about Milk snakes and this is their courting/mating period but the females don’t lay eggs for another 6 weeks or so which means I don’t have to worry about a whole clan of them. But really!