Happy Turkey Day!

Do you want to see my Thanksgiving "Turkey"?

I had sent the kids outside so we could take some pictures to send to my mom. The little boys decided to ride their bikes while waiting for everyone else. H. looked down near the garage door and tried to tell me there was something in a glue trap. My guess is that he couldn't remember the word "snake", instead he said there's one of those "things". Well, we live in an outer suburb with lots of bugs and other creepy, crawlies so a "thing" could mean a whole lot of lifeforms. I assumed he meant a big cricket or a cave centipede. Instead he meant...


This little guy got itself stuck on a glue trap that we use to keep the bug population in our garage down. (Keeping that pop. down reduces the number that come inside for a visit.) It was either looking for a warm place to hibernate or saw what looked like a bug buffet and decided to tuck in. Either way it got itself in big trouble. The entire underside of its body was completely trapped in this super sticky glue. The other kids and dh were coming out at this point and we discussed what to do. I decided that the most humane thing to do would be to try and get it unstuck by loosening the glue with warm water. The first attempt got his lower jaw unglued but on the second attempt it tried to bite the glue and got both jaws stuck and a mouthful of glue. Eventually I got it completely off the trap but he still had glue sticking to his body which made it hard for him to slither. Dh took the initiative and used some gas as a solvent, which removed all traces of the glue that I could feel. We placed him on a log in a protected area and he slowly made his way under the leaves. I'm not sure if it will survive but we did our best.

On an interesting note, S. had just gotten a book all about snakes from the library Last night! We now know that Turkey is an eastern garter snake, probably not much older than a baby since it wasn't very big and babies are 5-9 in. Here's hoping that Turkey recovers from his tough day and has many more bug-catching, mouse-catching days to come.