Nature's Spaghetti

Yesterday (Saturday) was a beautiful day to be outside working in the yard and garden. We spent much of the day planning and beginning to work on making another grape arbor / trellis in the orchard. I say another because we have one already, but several new chutes have taken root and we'll transplant them to start a new vine.

We're growing muscadine grapes, both the purple muscadine and the golden bronze scuppernongs, and they are sweet and delicious. They are also thick skinned, marvelously resistant to bugs.

Anyway, I was digging post holes yesterday in the North Carolina clay, and as we usually do while we are outside working, we let our chickens (the big ones, not the baby chicks) out of the pen so they could enjoy running around a while. (We can't let them run free all the time because of the plethora of natural predators in our woods, including foxes, raccoons, and hawks).

As I was digging, I heard one of the kids yell, "She's got a snake!" I turned and saw one of our black chickens (a black Australorp) running across the backyard with a snake, perhaps a foot long, in its mouth. The other chickens were chasing it, trying to get a piece of the action.

My first thought was to try to rescue the snake -- snakes are good to have around (eating mice) -- but as I ran toward the chicken I realized the snake was already dead. Still, I figured it wasn't healthy for the chicken to eat twelve inches of snake, so my goal became trying to get the snake from the chicken.

My youngest son joined me in this escapade as we chased the chicken around the yard, snake dangling from its mouth as if it were a long pasta noodle. That chicken is fast! Eventually it stopped running, and just as I reached it, it took four big gulps and the snake was gone.

If chickens could smile, I'd swear that this one was smiling a victory smile at me. The hen seemed none the worse for the wear, and I guess she will survive her feast.

It's time to go cook breakfast. We'll have our usual Sunday breakfast of puffed oven pancakes and then we're off to church. We have to be at church early today (orchestra warm up is at 7:25am).

Happy Easter, y'all!