Sadness and Excitement....

We lost a dog today, an old well loved dog, Shilo. We aren't even sure how old he was. He has been having hip trouble for a bit and just showing his age. He started going down this weekend and lost the battle today. As my dh said it seemed he just lost the will to live. He was our pet me dog. At his biggest he was about 150 LBS. of love! He came as a puppy that could fit through the 4x4 (for just a few days). My DS who brought him home said, "This is a GUARD dog, NOT a pet me dog." Funny he forgot to tell Shilo about it. He was always the biggest pet me dog we owned.

As I was driving around in the Ranger having a cry and talk to God about loosing Shilo I discovered a nice size bull snake coming OUT of the barn. I sat and watched him a bit, just enjoying the distraction. Then I went and yelled at kids to come see. They went back and got a camera so we could have memories of the first snake of the season. This was a very slow moving snake that we got lots of pictures of. I did stir him up enough to get him to coil and hiss. A bull snake gets it's name because it looks much like a rattlesnake and when disturbed, sounds almost exactly like the rattle of a rattle snake. For those that are a bit squeamish about snakes, pick your feet up now.........

As he slithered by some 4x4's I got a guesstimate of how big he was. As his head went past the last 4x4 I marked which 4x4 his tail was on. Then I counted 17 squares. That is a snake about 68 inches long or 5 ft 8 inches. Not the biggest one we have found around here. We had three in the barn a few years ago that were just under 8ft. I know this because they were laying stretched out beside an 8ft piece of paneling. :)