A couple of days ago, I was doing my afternoon check on my chickens. I have 4 breeding pens lined up inside a fenced yard, and I was walking along the front of the pens to check the birds, make sure they had enough food and water, check for late eggs, etc. The second to the last pen is the largest of the 4 and sticks out a bit, which hides the last pen, which is my Silkie pen, from view until I turn the corner and am right on it.
I turn the corner around the largest pen to open up the door to the Silkie pen, and this is what greeted me...
This is a California gopher snake. Somehow it had wound its way up the side of the pen by winding its way through the chicken wire and got itself firmly stuck in three places. It was right at eye level and right by the door latch to open the Silkie pen!
Now, I'm not afraid of snakes, but this definitely suprised me and I let out a little yelp! After the initial shock, I took a little closer look and saw what had happened. It was still alive, and mostly okay except for obviously being very stuck and it's skin being scraped up in a few places.
After checking to make sure my Silkies were okay, I called for my DH to help me get the snake out of the wire. There was no way to just pull the snake free of the wire without killing it, so my DH grabbed a pair of wire cutters and cut the wire away while I held the snake's body away from where my DH was cutting the best I could (I'm the only one in my family that is not afraid to handle snakes).
After we got it free, I walked with it wrapped around my arm for about 1/4 mile and released it in a brush pile. It was remarkably calm during the whole ordeal, but I did hold it right behind it's head the whole time just to be on the safe side.
This was one of the largest gopher snakes I have seen; I estimate it was around 4 1/2 feet long.
I have no idea what it was doing in my Silkie pen and why it decided to climb up the side of the pen in the chicken wire... I don't know if these kind of snakes will go after eggs, I have no chicks in these pens, and a full grown Silkie would be way too much for a snake of this size to handle. Maybe it was just looking around the chicken pens hoping it would get lucky and find something small enough to eat, and ended up being pecked at by a barrage of Silkie beaks and decided the best direction to head was up. Whatever the reason was, it sure made for an interesting afternoon!
Here's another pic of the stuck snake from the inside of the pen:
I turn the corner around the largest pen to open up the door to the Silkie pen, and this is what greeted me...
This is a California gopher snake. Somehow it had wound its way up the side of the pen by winding its way through the chicken wire and got itself firmly stuck in three places. It was right at eye level and right by the door latch to open the Silkie pen!
Now, I'm not afraid of snakes, but this definitely suprised me and I let out a little yelp! After the initial shock, I took a little closer look and saw what had happened. It was still alive, and mostly okay except for obviously being very stuck and it's skin being scraped up in a few places.
After checking to make sure my Silkies were okay, I called for my DH to help me get the snake out of the wire. There was no way to just pull the snake free of the wire without killing it, so my DH grabbed a pair of wire cutters and cut the wire away while I held the snake's body away from where my DH was cutting the best I could (I'm the only one in my family that is not afraid to handle snakes).
After we got it free, I walked with it wrapped around my arm for about 1/4 mile and released it in a brush pile. It was remarkably calm during the whole ordeal, but I did hold it right behind it's head the whole time just to be on the safe side.
I have no idea what it was doing in my Silkie pen and why it decided to climb up the side of the pen in the chicken wire... I don't know if these kind of snakes will go after eggs, I have no chicks in these pens, and a full grown Silkie would be way too much for a snake of this size to handle. Maybe it was just looking around the chicken pens hoping it would get lucky and find something small enough to eat, and ended up being pecked at by a barrage of Silkie beaks and decided the best direction to head was up. Whatever the reason was, it sure made for an interesting afternoon!
Here's another pic of the stuck snake from the inside of the pen:
