Snake

The excitement today at the UC Botanical Garden was the Gopher Snake in the soil bin. At first I thought maybe it could be a rattlesnake, but it had no rattle. And I thought it might be alive, but it didn't move, even when we became noisy. So, finally, I decided I had to know if it was alive, and I touched it with a shovel. Dead. Then I used a shovel to pull it out of the soil. No head. REALLY DEAD. When Paul, our brave director, saw it, he said, "Oh that is just a gopher snake. I used to work with those. Then he picked it up and disposed of it. It is so nice sometimes to have a zoologist around. The botanists, horticulturalists and gardeners are fine, but sometimes you need someone who is comfortable with animals.