We spent the past week working on Chekhov’s cottage; yeah, the bathhouse posts are a little behind, because I knew there would be a lot of fiddly bits that wouldn’t really show in photos that well (and they look like they’ll be catching up pretty soon). Anyhow, last week we did the floors and doors, then over the weekend we shingled the roof; as I said last week, I’m not especially fond of roofing, and I was even less fond of this one than of the metal ones I’ve mostly done in the past, both because it was multiple stages (boards, underlayment, shingles) and because the roof, designed for Baltic winters, is much steeper than what I’m used to. So while I usually just use the safety harness as a precaution, this time I could barely move around the roof without it. But we finished yesterday, and my back is mighty glad of it. This isn’t to say it was a total slog; on Saturday I even took a short break to socialize with a tiny visitor to the construction site.
Diary #522
June 30, 2020 by Maggie McNeill
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re: “… I even took a short break to socialize with a tiny visitor to the construction site.”
Or it is just checking you out, the visitor to its range who is building it a new cover to hide under while hunting worms and slugs for lunch.
Looks like some kind of garter snake. You also found one last year as I recall. The long yellowish stripe is common to many garter snake species and subspecies.
If it is a garter snake, they have annual orgies. Look for mating balls of dozens when they awaken from brumation / hibernation in spring. They like to find deadfall tree limbs or sections flat on the ground, with soft earth hollows underneath for brumation.
They also like a little shallow standing water, something they can easily get into and out of to nab some tadpoles for lunch.
Maybe you have a herpetologist reader who can positively identify it.
Oh, it’s definitely a garter snake; they’re very common around here. I often see them slithering hrough the grass near the chicken yard.