{"id":142,"date":"2009-02-13T19:25:54","date_gmt":"2009-02-14T01:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=142"},"modified":"2009-02-13T19:25:54","modified_gmt":"2009-02-14T01:25:54","slug":"snake-in-the-grass-harmless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=142","title":{"rendered":"Snake in the grass (harmless)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Though we have some large snakes on the place, most of the snake species are small, and we&#8217;re lucky if we get a glimpse of them.\u00a0\u00a0 This little gray snake with the black head and orange &#8220;collar&#8221;\u00a0 is barely a foot long and skinny as a pencil&#8211;easy to miss, if it weren&#8217;t that we&#8217;re in severe drought and the grass to hide it just isn&#8217;t there.<\/p>\n<p>This is a Prairie Ring-necked Snake, <em>Diadophis punctatus arnyi<\/em>, a shy little creature that sometimes freezes long enough to have its picture taken.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_143\" style=\"width: 333px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-143\" class=\"size-full wp-image-143\" title=\"prairie-ringneck-snake197\" src=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/prairie-ringneck-snake197.jpg\" alt=\"Prairie Ring-necked Snake\" width=\"323\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/prairie-ringneck-snake197.jpg 323w, http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/prairie-ringneck-snake197-300x208.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 323px) 100vw, 323px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-143\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Prairie Ring-necked Snake<\/p><\/div>\n<p><!--more--><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-144\" title=\"prairie-ringneck-snake199\" src=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/prairie-ringneck-snake199.jpg\" alt=\"prairie-ringneck-snake199\" width=\"344\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/prairie-ringneck-snake199.jpg 344w, http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/prairie-ringneck-snake199-300x130.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 344px) 100vw, 344px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>These snakes eat slugs, earthworms, lizards, and even smaller snakes.\u00a0\u00a0 They come out of hibernation and go looking for a place to lay eggs, and since it reached 80 degrees F. today, and we&#8217;ve had a mild winter&#8230;it&#8217;s time for them to be on the move.<\/p>\n<p>Fire ants like to eat their eggs, so they&#8217;ve declined in some areas with heavy fire ant infestations, but the good thing (the only good thing) about the past 17 months of drought is that the fire ant population is down.\u00a0\u00a0 So maybe the ring-necked snake population will rebound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Though we have some large snakes on the place, most of the snake species are small, and we&#8217;re lucky if we get a glimpse of them.\u00a0\u00a0 This little gray snake with the black head and orange &#8220;collar&#8221;\u00a0 is barely a foot long and skinny as a pencil&#8211;easy to miss, if it weren&#8217;t that we&#8217;re in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[70,31],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wildlife","tag-photography","tag-snake"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}