- Author: Erin Mahaney
Who knew gopher snakes climb trees? We learned that they could when my husband saw one climb (slither?) up our backyard orange tree.
On a recent afternoon, my husband and daughter discovered a large snake winding its way along a backyard path of our suburban home. The snake apparently tired of having its picture taken and slowly made its escape up our orange tree. Based on the snake’s markings, my husband concluded that it was a California Night Snake, which is described as mildly venomous, but not dangerous to humans. You can imagine my surprise when I was told that we had a venomous tree snake in our backyard! On further research and consultation with the California Academy of Sciences’ Herpetology Department, however, we learned that our snake was merely a “garden-variety” gopher snake.
I am used to see gopher snakes out in the field, but not in a truly suburban environment. Since then, however, I have learned that gopher snakes one of the more common snakes in California. They are often seen around human dwellings, including suburban backyards, because they are attracted to rodents in the area.
Wait. Attracted to rodents? What rodents?! Alas, within two days, we found out when we spotted a rat raiding our bird feeder. Ugh. Now we have given up filling our bird feeders (which I miss quite a bit) and are trying to be better about picking up fallen fruit, and we are rooting for our tree-climbing gopher snake to do its job. Even though we haven’t seen the snake since that one day, we can’t persuade our children to pick oranges anymore!
References:
http://www.saczoo.org/document.doc?id=356
http://www.californiaherps.com/identification/snakesid/gophersnakes.id.html
- Author: Marime Burton
The privet tree (Ligustrum lucidum) is a fast-growing evergreen that can grow 25 to 40 feet in height. It has glossy dark green leaves and tiny yellowish flowers that bloom from late spring to summer and give off an unpleasant smell. In the old neighborhood where I live they are a real nuisance. In most cases they probably started out as hedges but are now 25-30 feet tall. They need absolutely no encouragement to grow vigorously. Suckers come up all around their trunks to assure their posterity and are difficult to pull from the ground.
The first few years after I moved into my house I was protective of the seven or eight of them that lined my back fence because they provided privacy and shade. My neighbor on the other side of the fence complained about the mess they made – a nonstop parade of falling debris. Pollen-laden flower clusters, messy purple berries and dead leaves made it almost impossible to grow anything else near them. I just thought he was crabby.
For the past several years the neighbor on my garage side, who believes everything that grows has a right to be there, has encouraged each little privet that sprouts. I cut them back when they come over the fence but even with a ladder I’m no match for their rapid growth. The bloom is ending now and very soon the berries will come, along with birds in a feeding frenzy. You can probably imagine what my driveway looks like then. Guess who’s crabby now?
