Black Snake

I was walking through the gate today to go get the mail and saw a head sticking out of my rain gutter.

It turned out to be a black snake, so I watched it for a while as it crawled back and forth along the gutter and finally started up the roof.

I imagine the shingles were smoking hot from the sun, so the black snake didn't take long to find it's way onto my power line. It eventually made its way to the ground where I picked it up with a pitch fork and took it to the woods.

It will live to see another day. I used to kill the black snakes that were in the yard, but stopped a few years ago after hearing that they eat other snakes - especially copper heads. Plus, the things are pretty docile - during the entire journey on the picth fork (after dropping it multiple times) not once did it try to strike or bite me. This snake was about 5 feet long - probably the largest snake I've seen in our yard. After I released it in the woods, it came right back into the yard. So I grabbed it again and took it deeper into the woods. I'm fairly confident that it came back anyways.