gopher snake posing for a picture

Today I mowed down the dry dead plants that sprouted from the rain we had a few weeks back.  While walking back and forth I would see things darting around.  A lizard, a spider, a horned toad.  What looks to the neighbors like I'm lazy.  The fire Department sees a fire hazard.  To the little critters running for their lives it's home.  They like living in the weeds.  To them it's cover.  Living inside a fenced yard full of weeds is like a wild life preserve.  Later in the day a long skinny gopher snake laid across the driveway.  He looked like he hadn't eaten in awhile.  If he stayed in our yard he was okay.  If he went into the neighbors yard they would smash it and celebrate it's death walking it around on the end of a stick.  Showing the others that make weird over reactions to it being a snake -any snake-

I started thinking about the water crisis in California.  The gophers won't be eating as well which means the gophers snakes won't either.  The State of California is restricting water usage, but they won't be restricting new resident to the the State or new housing developments, or apartments to be built.  Which means more people in the Southern California desert.

We watched him staking out a gopher hole 2 weeks ago