Who Lives Here? What'd She Eat? Did It Taste Real Good?

As I stepped off the stone steps into my yard to fill the birdbath, I saw this tableau and it told a mystery story. Something had dug a three-inch-wide hole (measured it) beneath the bottom step. It wasn't there yesterday. Whoever this hole-dweller was, he or she was not in sight. But he or she got hold of an egg -- just one, and plain white without identifying markings (I scrubbed the mud off a piece of shell, using an old toothbrush, just to check) -- and had opened and eaten it. Or, less likely, maybe something had hatched here. Eggshell reassembled provided no more clues.

The prime suspect is the large blacksnake who winters beneath my kitchen floor and eats mice. Saw her earlier this spring, sidewinding toward the house then disappearing beneath it, smooth as liquid, right by the kitchen door. Turned up one of her silver babies when digging nearby in order to plant annuals. I know my blacksnake savors eggs. Once I followed a mess of turkey-egg shells to a nest my blacksnake had cleaned out entirely. She was still there and let me take her picture. But if this time it was my snake or any other (because, three years ago, I saw a milk snake curled around the flagstones right here) how did it carry the egg from the nest to its door? In its mouth? Why didn't it dine where the egg was found?

For sure: It must've tasted real good.

World's Finest Milk Snake

Nice to be on vacation and take time to look down at my feet and see almost between them this exceptionally fine milk snake who agreed to pose for a picture. Approximately 20 inches long. They aren't usually out during the daytime, so it was doing me a favor.

What Becomes a Legend Most?

This blacksnake has lived near kitchen door for at least three years, hiding in the ivy and stones, and in winter she sleeps in warmth and peace beneath the cabin's kitchen floor and now and then eats a mouse. She has, in the past, left a magnificent three-foot shed skin for me to admire. Broken and emptied shells of creamy beige-spotted wild-turkey eggs led me to Ms. Blacksnake and this picture. She held still for a good five minutes as if to say, "I'm giving you paparazzi one chance to get a good snap, now get it, and be off." Look at her elegant costume. I call this photo "What becomes a legend most?"

I think it was one of her silver children I accidentally stepped on one night in July.