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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Jerry's squirrels & more

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  • From: "Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Jerry's squirrels & more
  • Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:01:49 -0600

 Jerry wrote:  "I've tasted canned snake, but had a hard time swallowing. Wasn't in the right frame of mind. "
 
Boy, I've been in the right frame of mind many a time, but for fresh killed snake.  The chicken snakes here subsist on our eggs all summer long.  It's just so much easier than looking for rodents.  I often weigh them just to see what my eggs are doing, the record was a 5 pounder.  My husband said, "Good thing for him we aren't Chinese."   I said, " I don't know, I'm feeling pretty Chinese right now."  A guy we know said he explained to the snakes what was going to happen if they didn't stay out of their chicken shed, and so one day they ate one.  Said there was a zillion little bones to contend with.  The worst part for me is that I worry the chicken snakes are going up in the trees to eat bird eggs and fledglings when I succeed in gathering eggs before they do.  I know that's what they do naturally, but I think there are so many more of them due to our chickens.   The weirdest part is that they occasionally kill a setting hen and attempt to eat her.  The evidence is that the feathers on neck of the dead hen are all stuck together with saliva or digestive juices. 
    Here in Tennessee, the famine of tree foods caused by 2007's infamous freeze pretty well starved out the squirrel population.  Everyone who notices the outdoors notices the lack of squirrels in this year of incredible bounty.  We have very few gray squirrels on and around our property, and I'm afraid that our population of flying squirrels would require an awful lot of catching and skinning to make stew.  You all have "tree rats" but we have "tree mice".  They like their tomatoes grown on trellises near the edge of the woods for easy access.  Donna  
   
   



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