I found this black rat snake egg out in the middle of the pasture on the Sunday before Memorial Day. I don’t know what it was doing on the access road. My guess is a skunk dug up the nest and happened to leave this egg.
Here’s a better look at it:
The black rat snake (Elaphe obsoleta) is the largest snake in West Virginia, and for most of its range, it is the largest snake. Only the indigo snake and one pine snake specimen exceed the black rat snake in length.
We often see them slithering quickly through the tall grass. I remember watching one cut through the playground when I was in elementary school. I thought it was awesome, but almost everyone wanted to kill it. This was West Virginia, of course, and allowing a snake to live is just an affront to everyone’s sensibilities.
I think Emily Dickenson got this view of the black snake cutting through the grass:
A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,–did you not,
His notice sudden is.
The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.
He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,
Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,–
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.
Several of nature’s people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;
But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone
i have had several black-snakes over my lifetime, and they were delightful critters, remarkably docile and friendly.
my favorite was a 6-ft female i called Obssssidian – she was a real party-animal, did not mind being handled by tentative strangers, and never hissed or struck in her life;
i took her off a shed roof in an April rain, the residents were going to kill her.
somebody else had already tried, and she always had trouble with her sheds; she appeared to have been beaten with a shovel, i was amazed that she had survived, as she had folds of scar-tissue on both sides of her body, and a few on her back.
they got more shallow with each shed, but they were still readily visible.
she was an old-lady when i got her, and i was sorry
that i had her for only 4-years; but she was comfortable and happy and nobody was chasing her with a hickory-handle, and homicide in mind.
black-snakes are handsome, IMO. personal prejudice ;–)
— terry
terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF
I never really thought that poem was actually about a snake.
But I guess sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
It was originally called “The Snake.”
Once you think that poem is about something else, there’s no going back…
Any chance it’s still viable? Maybe you could hatch it out.