Sorry, Mr. Snake!

Spring has come to the Sonoran desert and that means you'll start to see more lizards coming out and running around. Also, this means the snakes start to move around more.

Late October I wrote about the rattlesnakes (note: plural) my wife killed. http://sonoranstories.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_sonoranstories_archive.html

With these previous events in mind, I saw a rather large snake the other afternoon when I was driving up to the house. Believe it or not, my first instinct was to avoid killing a living thing. Then it occurred to me that if I killed a poisonous snake it would less likely to get to our dogs and maybe even my wife or I.

So, I ran it over and in my rear view mirror I saw it buckle and writhe. Although killing an innocent creature may be bad karma for me I still said a short prayer for the snake.

When I walked up to it the snake started to slither away. Problem was it was a bull snake and not a poisonous at all. It crawled under a creosote bush and died. Hissing in pain as it twisted it finally quit moving.

Maybe a hawk or something will pick it up for food. I felt bad about it since it was a beautiful creature. I'll have to be more careful next time.