We had a surprise visitor in the middle of the day a couple of weeks ago.  Stretched out across our tiny patch of grass in our backyard was a large snake.  He or she had yellow stripes running the length of both sides of the dark brown body, round pupils and no rattles.  Whew! Not a rattlesnake.  I did some quick research on California Herps website and found that our visitor was likely a striped racer. 

Striped racer snakes are lumped in with gopher snakes and eat small birds, lizards, frogs, rodents, small snakes and some insects.  They are diurnal.  We have had a lot of lizards darting around our yard this year.  Our dog Bindi, a McNab – a type of herding dog, likes to hunt lizards.  She doesn't do anything to them.  She just stalks them and then stands frozen watching them.  It's kind of a faceoff and pretty funny to watch.  I am guessing that the snake found our backyard to be an all-you-can-eat buffet. 

I was able to take a couple of quick pictures with my cell phone and then quick-as-a-flash, he or she zipped across the walkway and disappeared in the California fuchsia and under the fence into the safety of the neighbor's woodpile.  I wonder if that snake is still around, though.  There don't seem to be as many lizards.  Hmmm.