There's a Snake on my Driveway

Momentarily in the bucket!

In one of my earlier blogs, there was a Gooseberry in my Handbag, I was quite surprised to see it, so imagine my surprise to find a snake on my driveway!
It was a hot and sunny day. Tony was clearing out the garage, Lauren had found a giant piece of cardboard, got Tony to draw round her and was colouring herself in on the driveway, when a friend came to play for half an hour.
I heard Lauren's friends mum and dad come to get her and the usual shenanigans ensued as the girls tried to avoid capture! The men talked out front, while everyone else ended up in the back garden looking at the guinea pigs, before filtering out through the garage and over the cardboard drawing of Lauren.
As I came out of the garage I stopped on the cardboard and looked down and thought what an amazing toy, I shouted Tony, "When did Lauren get this toy snake, it's brilliant?" He didn't hear me. "Tony?" I started to move and the toy poked it's tongue out! I looked surprised, the snake reared up and I shouted a bit louder. I'm not frightened of snakes but I didn't want anyone to miss it. Everyone came running just in time to see the snake slither off around the side of the garage. For a moment there was quite a furore, it was very exciting and we all recounted our previous snake encounters before the others had to go on their way.
We were pretty sure the snake was a grass snake, so we weren't worried for ourselves, however, we knew from past experience that it would be interested in our pond and we were slightly concerned for Silver our baby guinea pig, so we decided to try and catch him (or her) in a bucket and release him over in the fields.
We found the snake nestled between two plant pots, a lot more scared than we were. After photographing it, Tony got a big glove on and managed to get the snake (who protested with a lot of hissing) into the bucket. Of course, we soon realised it's not easy to keep a snake in a bucket. Luckily, I've watched a lot of Steve Backshall's Deadly 60 so I ran in and grabbed a pillow case, Tony sprang into action to catch the snake as it disappeared up next doors path, heading for their super-sized pond with it's rich rewards no doubt. With a surprisingly deft manoeuvre for us we got it quickly in the bottom of the pillow case and Lauren and Tony headed off over the fields to release it.
And that was the end of that. The pillow case came back with a musky smell.
We decided to google the grass snake and Wikipedia told us that they rarely ever bite, usually they do as ours had done, rear up and hiss and release a scent. The most amazing thing it does is when it's under pressure from a predator it feigns death and can make itself bleed from the mouth. Isn't nature fantastic?
P.S. The good news is that a grass snakes diet is mostly water based so little Silver will be safe as long as we have frogs, toads, newts and fish!

Ready for release.................