Two Snakes On The Woodpile
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"Two Snakes on the Woodpile." Copyright 2008 by Valerie Allgrove
My life with my daughter is a continuous series of stories. The stories about introducing my daughter to the outdoors include some of our most instinctive interactions. I joke with friends that the only way to get her outdoors faster than saying, "Hey there's a snake on the woodpile" is to tell her that there are two snakes on the woodpile.
These are garter snakes, of course.
I live in Connecticut, just North of Hartford, where I have a nice old farmhouse on about an acre of lawn and gardens backing up to the woods. Close to the center of town, but yet with nearby wetlands and about a 3 minute walk to the Farmington River. I have created all sorts of perennial gardens around the house, which I add to each year, and which form the basis of some of our frequent interactions with wildlife and the outdoors.
Morgan was born in the summer of 1998, and brought home to this house. Early on in her life, I'd be out working in the gardens with her, first crawling, then staggering around next to me.
There are very few unsafe things here, so as long as I kept her out of the barn and did a periodic sweep for young poison ivy plants, I figured she was pretty safe.
I have some great pictures of her eating dirt, grass, or just lying in the gardens. I remember one time when, at age one, Morgan was walking along pretty steadily and came up to one of the gardens where I had a big growth of Impatiens flowers in full bloom. It had formed a great soft green and white mound and looked just like an embroidered cushion.
She looked at the flowers, then carefully turned around and sat. Much to her surprise, she wound up on the ground, with me laughing at her expression! The soft fleshy stems of the Impatiens provided no support, and dropped her right down.
Most of Morgan's adventures with me have been step by step. That is, by the time I took her out of the yard, I had taught her several basic safety rules. Stay with me being the first. Don't pick plants or flowers without checking with me, even the pretty roses have thorns and I know which ones will hurt your little fingers. Don't touch any animals unless I say it's ok, butterflies are nice but bees and hornets aren't.
Teaching, step by step. For success.
Early on in our adventures I have a photo of her, about 2 years old, in a swimmy-diaper with a garter snake in her hands. That was at another safe place, my parents' camp on Stone Pond in New Hampshire.
I had wanted Morgan to get to know snakes as interesting, smooth-skinned creatures. We had a nice long visit that day with a garter snake that I had gently picked up off a sunny rock, handled for a while, and then put back on the rock.
And I can remember going up to Case Quarry in Glastonbury, with Morgan about age 5, and carefully instructing her that if she saw a snake she could not try to catch it. She had to come and get me and take me to see it, to make sure it was a good safe snake, not a poisonous one. Only then, if I said it was alright, could she try to catch it. But not until! We never did see any poisonous snakes, but I wasn't taking any chances.
We had repeated the garter snake handling adventure many times by then. Morgan had discovered that there was a place in our yard where they like to hang out, an open rock wall in one front garden corner. And we often saw them sunning themselves on the woodpile in the back yard.
These days Morgan is 10, but still willing to race outdoors if I spy a garter snake in the gardens. And any time we're out hiking, we look for snakes, with a proper caution and respect for the potentially poisonous ones.
She likes snakes, she is careful but definitely comfortable with them as one of the many interesting creatures we encounter in the outdoors.
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