Don't Mess With Taxes

The recent rains we've had (yay! The lakes finally got some water) kick-started all sorts of growth. Mainly weeds, but also some of our shrubs.

So the hubby went out today to do some pruning. His backyard effort was interrrupted, however, by a snake that crawled from a bush to sun.

Still relatively new to the region and not being herpetologically up to speed, the hubby wisely moved on to another patch of greenery ... in the front yard.

But later we both went out back and the reptile was still there. I was only able to get this one photo before he retreated into the overgrowth.

A quick online search and we're pretty confident that our backyard resident is a Texas patchnose snake. You can compare that site's photos with this enlargement of my shot. It's a bit blurry, but you can see his face a little better.

We were glad to learn it's not poisonous. But we still plan to give him his space.

Hunting herps: That was the only snake we saw, so I don't think we need to call in snake specialist Samuel L. Jackson, most recently seen in Snakes on a Plane and Black Snake Moan.

But those movies got me thinking about other snake references. Here are a few I came up with:

Anaconda -- B movie with a decent cast. I guess everybody has bills to pay.

Raiders of the Lost Ark -- OK,  it isn't a movie about snakes, but the scene with Indy facing the pit full of the slithery creatures -- "Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?" -- is classic.

Escape from New York --  Again, taking liberties, but Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken is a great movie hero.

SSSSSSS -- Cheesy snakes from the '70s with Strother Martin.

And musically, I have to include Joe Ely's version of Long Snake Moan from his Live Shots album.