Paula and I have had a tough time this summer with black snakes eating barn swallow babies. (I know there are men and women in uniform dying in Iraq, but I'll concentrate on them after we finish picking up tiny feathers and body parts).
I took a picture once of a black racer that had to have been six feet long slithering across the pasture and posted it to this weblog. We grow them really big on the farm. Well, they are quite common around here and one (or more) is (are) raiding the swallow nests when the four, five or six fuzzy little birdie heads are just starting to appear over the rim of the dried mud nests. One day they're all there; the next day, they're all gone.
And they ain't flying away.
I thought for a while that it was a barn owl coming in at night but signs are pointing more toward snakes.
We have had about fifteen nests of swallows this summer, all high up in the rafters of our barn (there are three active nests right now even this late in the summer) and few of them have seen chicks grow to adulthood.
Paula would probably prefer that I shoot the snake but I won't. Such is the way of nature.
But I will strangle the little bastard if I can catch him in there late at night.
Such is my nature.
