Sometimes, wildlife dramas are no farther than the mailbox.
Case in point: Around 7 p.m. the other day, I went out to my streetside mailbox in Decatur to get my mail. As I reached into the mailbox, I saw something move slightly at my feet — a snake!
I took a couple of steps backward. At first glance, it looked like a venomous copperhead from its coloration — reddish-brown, coppery body with black cross bands.
On second look, I saw that the 1.5-foot-long snake didn’t have a triangular flat head like a copperhead. Also, its color pattern didn’t fit a copperhead’s, and I concluded I was looking at a nonvenomous midland water snake, whose coloration is similar to a copperhead’s. Water snakes have bulb-shaped cross bands, whereas copperheads have an hourglass-like pattern.
I figured that the water snake probably had crawled up from Burnt Fork Creek behind my home. As I watched, the snake began slithering up the street.
Then, a second part of the drama unfolded. A feisty Northern mockingbird suddenly swooped down and landed next to the reptile and began flashing its wings and pecking at it. Apparently, the bird saw the serpent as a threat to its nest — similar to the way mockingbirds will attack cats, dogs and even people whom they perceive as threats.
After harassing the snake for a minute or so, the mockingbird flew off. Then, just as quickly, another bird, a male Northern cardinal, landed next to the snake and also suspiciously eyed it before flying off.
Then, my next-door neighbor, Daniel Ballard, and his daughter, Eden, came out to see what the commotion was about. A landscape ecologist, Ballard knows a few things about snakes. He picked up the snake and said he would release it at the creek.
The midland water snake, he noted, although nonvenomous and not dangerous to people or pets, will readily bite to defend itself. It also is one of several species of nonvenomous snakes that can flatten their heads into a triangular shape to imitate a venomous snake to fool predators.
IN THE SKY: From David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer: The moon will be new on Tuesday. The Eta Aquariid Meteor shower will peak this weekend at about 60 meteors per hour in the southeast after dark. Mars and Mercury are in the east just before sunrise. Saturn is in the west at dusk.
Charles Seabrook can be reached at charles.seabrook@yahoo.com.
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