When you start clearing out woods and burning brush piles and moving things around and well, just being outside more – you are bound to see more of the wild things that also call your land their home.

Sometimes these are lovely little encounters, like the snails and the praying mantis we’ve been seeing.

Furble unfortunately also found this guy – and ate him. She also recently left us part of a wild bunny. The kids weren’t too thrilled.

Sometimes it can be quite amusing – now that the culvert is in and the stream is running through it we are seeing a proliferation of frogs and tadpoles.  I love walking down to the bridge and hearing the various cries of “Eep!” followed by a splash as the frogs all try to avoid me.

And sometimes, it’s just creepy.

This copperhead snake tried to escape a brush pile we were burning.  He didn’t make it, and we are glad of that because it saved us the trouble of having to kill this very poisonous creature.  This time of year the snakes are looking for dens in which to spend the winter – usually with other snakes.  We are keeping this in mind as we continue to burn brush piles and clean out the debris from the stream, because there are sure to be more where this guy came from.