Florida summer

Before we moved to the US, I would think of Florida in terms of the sun, sands and sea, Mickey Mouse and Disney World. Now that we are living here, I would add a few more words like rain, hurricanes, bugs and snakes to describe the Florida summer.

The official hurricane season runs from June to October. So far so good this year, no hurricane, just a few thunder storms and rain more or less every afternoon. We are managing with the bugs. Hubby sprayed the yards with bug killer a couple of times and we could go outside now without feeling we are the walking blood bank for the mosquitoes. But I am seeing more snakes this year. Two have actually come inside the garage and we have to use a broom to chase them out.

My husband and I were doing some gardening last weekend. I was weeding around the flower beds. Hubby was on the ladder trimming back the vine on the garage wall. He called me to go over and have a look. High up on the wall, there was a shed snake skin threading through the vine, all in one piece.
It was like not to be outdone by my husband, Poppy signalled me to take a look at the base of a hibiscus tree, there it was, another perfectly discarded snake skin winding through some lower branches.

I didn’t take photo of the shed snake skins but uploaded two earlier pictures I took of these snakes instead.

These are rat snakes, pretty harmless, nothing like the Burmese pythons that are taking over the Everglades. Florida government is having such a problem in eradicating these predators; this summer they introduced a new hunting season for pythons. It began about three weeks ago on Friday 17th July. A local newspaper reported that the hunters have captured and killed 6 pythons. 150,000 is estimated running loose on the glades, so just 149,994 to go now.