There’s a park near our house that is near a nature preserve, so no mow area, some trees and a nice walking path. They just renovated the play ground, so we had been coming quite often. On this particular day, we are getting ready to leave and we start to notice that the birds are going crazy. Lots of chirping that didn’t sound happy…high alert chirping.
Mr. A is with Jensen and I’m pushing Ian on the swings, the sun is starting to set so Mr. A puts Jensen in the stroller and I head over there with Ian and put him in the stroller as well. Mr. A and I are looking up at the trees wondering what has got these birds so upset. When Ian stands up in the stroller points to the ground and goes “Mommy what is that black thing?”. Both Mr. A and I ignore Ian thinking he’s just looking at some branch, but he asks again and I look down to see if it is a branch or if it was some piece of trash, so I can answer his question truthfully.
Well this “black thing” is moving and it’s maybe one foot away from Mr. A. I exclaim “that’s a snake!!!”. Mr. A jumps back, this snake is bigger than any snake I’ve seen in suburbia…I mean I’ve seen little garden snakes that could be mistaken for a worm…but this thing was 6-7 feet long! I promptly wheel the stroller away and of course after his initial shock wore off Mr. A took some pictures of it so that he could later on identify this snake online. Later he hypothesizes that it’s some kind of egg eating non-poisons snake and that’s probably why the birds were going crazy.
Moral of the story…don’t ignore your 2 year old’s questions about things on the ground.
