I had an errand I needed to run out and do this evening. So once Aubri was asleep, I figured it was a good time to go. As I was getting to the bottom of the hill I noticed the people who live in the house that is on the lowest street corner were out in the middle of the street. Before I turned I saw they had a pretty large gopher snake that it looked like they were trying to usher across the street. I turned and pulled and over to the side of the road and went to see if they needed any help. They said they had been sitting on their deck and had noticed something in the middle of the road and thought it looked like a squirrel. He went and got his binoculars and then could tell that it was a snake that was coiled in middle of the road. They saw a car go directly over it and then a bus soon followed. They wanted to come down and try to get it out of the road. I guess they got it to one side before I got there, and then it turned around and headed back into the street. They said it looked determined so they just wanted to see it make it across the street. I chatted with them for a bit and helped try to keep the snake moving in the direction of the sidewalk. When it reached the side of the street however it turned and looked like it was going to head up the gutter in street. Luckily they had brought a big box down with them and we decided it would probably be best to get it in the box and then drive it back up behind all the houses and let it go where it wouldn’t be near the road. Where the snake was headed was in between the road and the freeway and there isn’t that much space for it to roam so we figured it would probably turn around and head back across the street and it is a fairly busy main street and it didn’t seem like it would be very safe.
I have had quite a bit of experience with snakes and we had been kinda pushing it along and it was pretty much ignoring us. I have seen gophers before that coil and strike if you try to mess with them, and this one didn’t really seem to care that we were there. So I decided I would grab it, I actually expected it to put up a little fight when I lifted it up, but it really didn’t struggle. We put it in the box and then when we were trying to close it up, it almost got out but we were able to get it back in. I put it in the back of the Mazda and threw a blanket on top of it. The couple made sure I would be okay and I assured them that it would be okay and with the blanket on the box I didn’t think it would get out.
On my way up to let it go, I thought I would run by the house and grab Dylan to go with me because I knew he would think it was really neat. So, I grabbed him out of bed and we drove up behind the house to find a good place to let the snake go. Dylan was very excited but also worried. When I told him it was a Gopher snake he though I said Cobra and I had to explain to him what kind of snake it was and that it wouldn’t bite him. He was very excited to see it in the box, but when it started to come out of the box, he lost a little bit of his braveness and kinda stood behind my leg. He really thought it was exciting though and followed it for a while until it turned and started coming toward him and then he thought for sure it was going to bite him. We couldn’t keep it headed out into the field so I figured the best thing to do would be to pick it up and take it out as far as I could and let it go. I gave Dylan the video camera because he wanted to take pictures of it and I took it out about as far as I could and let it go. As soon as I did, it turned and came back toward me and I thought for sure it was headed for the street again, but it turned and followed another path away from the street so I think it should be safe now. I ran and got Dylan so that he could see it disappear and say goodbye but we couldn’t find it once we got out there. I really hope that it stays out of the street and has a long life out there.
Tags: Dylan, gopher snake, Tomi, video