Fishing With Walker @ Tuckasegee

 

 

 

After work on Thursday in Flat Rock, I tooled on over to Tuckasegee where Walker is warden for the summer. We spent just over 24 hours together talking, cooking, digging a new outhouse hole (he did the digging, I did the watching), looking for bear signs, sitting around the campfire, picking blackberries and fishing in the Tuckasegee River. We caught quite a few brown (native) trout which are not really brown but full of beautiful color patterns. At one point while I was digging for worms for our fishing trip, he yelled, "Mom, come here quick." I ran up to his cabin and he showed me his resident black snake that was crawling around his kitchen sink and then heading up into the rafters to look for mice.

He returns to Fairview in two weeks after being in Chapel Hill for two years and at Tuckasegee this summer. He's going to be the farm manager for the organic pasture meats business at the end of our road (Spring House Meats - you can check them out on the web). They have an old very small house for him to live in less than a mile from us!! His girlfriend is waiting to hear on the 25th whether or not she gets a job with one of the Clarke clan right here. If she does, we've offered her Jake's room. I had such a great time with Walker that I hope to go again next week before he moves back here. If so, more photos will be forthcoming, especially if we DO see that bear he's sighted several times already.

Black Snake the Sequel:

Act II: Well, the snake decided to leave the egg and head up into the attic of the chicken house. I knew better, but wishfully hoped that would be the last of him and he'd just sit there and eat mice and we'd all be happy. An hour or so later, I came out to get the egg he'd left and as I reached for it, I jumped back when I saw him, at my feet, curled up in what he must have thought was a snakey lazy river - one of the chicken waterers. Several hours went by and he hadn't moved so after dinner I told Franklin that although the animals were NOT his responsibility, I'd be ever so grateful if he could do something or get someone to do something with that snake. Low and behold, he went out there with a postal sack, of all things, and threw it over the waterer then tried to flip the whole thing, snake and all, into the bag. It didn't work out exactly as he'd planned and the snake was on the loose and headed under the hen house. I thought all was lost when my brave husband grabbed Hoodini-Snake by the tail and swung him around and around trying to keep the snake's head away. I regret I don't have photos of this part. Guess he got him so dizzy that when he stopped spinning, the snake was stunned just enough to give Franklin time to pick up the bag and throw him in. As I write, he's headed up the mountain to let the reptile go Hansel and Grettle-like. I told him before he left that he'd gone up a whole bunch of notches in my book.

 

 

 

 

A Snake in the Chicken House

I reached in to collect the usual three eggs this afternoon but someone had beat me to it. Here's a black snake trying to get his head around his second egg. I deftly took the third egg out of the other nest thinking he was sufficiently preoccupied. Over a period of 20 minutes, I took a series of photos as he tried to stretch his mouth around his dinner. Eventually, he got tired of the size of the egg or of my camera's up close beeps and flashes (or both) and he backed off the egg to look me square in the eyes and hiss for the last photo. I'm headed back out there to see if he's moved on or if he's giving it another go-round. He probably felt fairly vulnerable with me in his face and his face on that egg. I wish Walker was here to take him away. Someone has to or he'll come back as a regular at the Henhouse Diner.