Broderick Wildlife Sightings

So here we are, graduated, and now in California, working for John's parents, doing some manual labor on their landscape. Yesterday we started the adventures in landscaping with moving some gravel around, sifting river stones out of clay, and finished up with some pruning.

The Crepe myrtles (brighter green shrubs) were the focus of our pruning efforts.

While I was coming down from the hill to take a look at what we were doing and re-evaluate what needed to be done, an unwelcome sight caught my eye.



Now, I'm no chicken, nor a rat, so I'm not afraid of snakes. But I'll tell you, I have a healthy respect for wild animals, and snakes aren't my favorites. Something about growing up in Texas, where if you see a snake, high chances are it is venomous, and having gone through first aid certification a goodly number of times, I've seen some ugly snake bites from both venomous and non-venomous snakes. I saw it was a garter snake, but don't be mislead by the prior picture...



This reptile is a good, healthy 2.5-3 feet long. I changed my path up and down that hill and kept on pruning the shrub. But by the time we were done, our scaly friend had wound his way higher up the hill into a more dense shrub (he was only just visible). At that point, I happily cleaned up and John and I went inside.

The Broderick residence is also the hosting a lovely mourning dove, who has decided that she would nest in a rather high-traffic area, that is out of snake-reach.

As you can see, Momma Dove's nest is constructed right up against the side of the garage, on a ladder that is mounted at about 5-6 feet high. She sits there stone-still as we conduct our business walking past noisily at a frequent interval. I'm hoping her dove-lets learn to fly on their first nudge, otherwise I'm afraid they'll probably end up feeding the snake, but only if the large orange cat doesn't get to them first.

Today while clearing some dead grasses I found a mostly decomposed rodent skull (there was still fur on the scalp, but that was all). I'm wondering who got that one.

But the exciting discovery of today was John's finding in a similar grass clump what I believe is an immature male black widow spider. He was long in body, not the huge round abdomen that is the females' mark, he was a medium brown and had the telltale hourglass on his bottom-side. It was an orange as opposed to red. But from what I can tell, he's still legitimately a black widow spider. And if the darkening from light brown to black occurs after mating, I'm going to bet that he's mated within the past month and in the process of transitioning colors.

We'll keep you posted on the adventures!