Milk Snake

A while back my cousin, his wife and son came to visit. It was Duston's first trip to Iowa from the west coast. Right away Duston asked if we had snakes around. I told him I saw a snake 4 years ago and never again but that they were probably around. Within 5 minutes this conversation occurred:

D: Dad, Dad, come look!

Me: What in the world is he calling you for

D's Dad: He probably has a snake

Me: No he doesn't

D's Dad: yes, he probably does

We get up and walk to the front door to see this:

Yes, the kid was holding a snake and not just a little snake. Nor was it a common garter snake. I content inside the house at first. My son, however, was dying to go outside and hold the "worm". He proceeded to inform Duston that you catch fish with those worms. Anyway, I made Duston take it back down in the pasture where he found it. Of course, he returns a little later, and I wish I would have got a picture of it, with my son sitting on one shoulder and a snake in the opposite hand. This time, a little smaller snake and a common garter snake. He let that loose up by the driveway and later showed me where he found them. Snake boy!

I had no clue what kind of snake it was. It looked similar in pattern to the bermese python my uncle had when I was young. When I met Jody at the Science Center, we saw snakes in the "outdoors" section. I, of course, grabbed out my camera, told her the story and tried to find a matching snake. None matched. I was still thinking of the possibility that someone lost a python and it bred with another lost python in my pasture. The next week, Ryan was weed trimming outside and hit a snake. Okay, at this point I decided no more playing outside bare foot!

It wasn't until I came back to work that I found out what it really was. At the desk next to me is a DNR wildlife person and she got out her Iowa snake book and then we googled what we thought it was. That 3 foot long snake in my pasture is a milk snake. It eats rodents and such so I guess he's not so bad.