Saga of the enourmous king snake and the birds

Living out in the country as we do, every now and then we are treated to some amazing views out our windows....

How about this to put some life into putting the washing away!!  I called and the kids came running.  The snake could not hear us (or technically, could not smell us through the glass with it's tongue), but at the sound of their excited chatter, it froze in this position.  Like a kid looking into a candy store right?

I explained to the kids that this was a harmless snake, despite its size, it would try to get away from us.  So as long as we left it alone it wouldn't hurt us....

"Hello, anybody in there?"

So we watched it slither away, and disappear into the pine tree....all 5 and a half feet of it....

Then later, there was a disturbance outside, I saw a group of different birds all congregating in the same area, intent on something in the pecan tree in the front yard....we went out for a look...there was the snake again, this time, climbing vertically up a tree - what an amazing feat!!!

Where were our guard dogs who live in the front yard?  Had the snake got past their ultrasonic intruder detection measures? 

The mockingbirds were surprisingly agressive.  This one would dive at it and it almost looked like it would flick the snake off the tree (at which point we would have run away, very fast)...

We decided to leave nature and return to the school books...inside...away from the snake over our heads.  A short while later, we noticed the birds had shifted their attention to the another pecan tree.  We went outside to look, and watch the mockingbirds successfully foil the snake's attempt to climb the tree.  At this stage, the Man-of-the-House came home, we pointed out the snake, and told him we had been carefully observing the harmless snake.  He told us, yes it was not poisonous, but this was not the type of king snake we wanted in our yard.  He had a friend who had to go to hospital after being bitten by one just like this - as the bite was quite messy. 

One of our dogs began to sniff around (not yet seeing the snake poised to strike at him)...he saw it after it struck at him, but the snake only got a mouthfull of fluffy hair (thanks to the winter coat).

After this we decided the safest thing for the children and dogs that roamed our yard in bare feet was a dead snake...disection 101 later....Aussie Kim