Smokey Mountain Breakdown

So, Max is once again barking his frantic--OMG! OMG! OMFG! Lookit! Lookit! Lookit!--and that can mean only one thing--Snake. Or trapped something.

Anyway, I find he is yapping at a black racer snake living behind my heat pump. The racer has caught a baby bunny wabbit and is squeezing it to death. Not sure how the bunny got there--unless the bunnies are living there and the black racer came upon them. Or Max chased the bunny into the snake's opportunistic reach. Not sure, but squeezing was well under way by the time I found them.



I'm actually sort of glad to have this sort of snake living around the house because they eat mice and rats and all sorts of things I don't want around. But I've kept snakes before and I would have sworn this was a much more ambitious meal than a snake this size could handle. I found a big one in the chicken coop once that had eaten the fake easter eggs I'd put in the nests to encourage the hens to lay. Had to kill that one since it wouldn't have survived with all that plastic in its gullet.


I gave him some privacy to concentrate on consuming the bunny and when I came back out he had stuffed himself in the hidey hole between the heat pump and the house. So I didn't get a picture of the lump. But it might have looked like this:


Except with a bunny rabbit.