Salaric Gardening and Wildlife

Snake Skin

I found this snake skin in the garden – this was a bit of a relief as we hadn’t seen any sign of the adders who normally live on the compost heap. Snakes shed their skins rather than a few cells at a time like us.

Here is the underside – note the scales are more rectangular than the top side.

This is the top side and you can actually see the snakes patterning – I don’t actually know what type of snake this belongs too.

My little girl was a bit worried that it was a dead snake so we had to lots of explaining which ended up in some very interesting conversations.

Mr Fox

I was sitting in my little girls room reading to her when I saw what I initially thought was one of out cats coming to sit in the gully outside our house but it wasn’t it was a fox.

We rushed down stairs and without thinking I opened the front door to look and there was a fox with a largish bird in its muzzel on my front door steep staring at me!

Unfortunatly by the time I had my composure and camera it was high tailing it away.

Missing Frog No 2

The other frog appears to have disappeared from Jean’s frogarium which is a shame the mark two tadpols are still swimming around in their happily and the pond snail is still munching the algea. My sinarious are a) they’ve climbed up the side and hopped away hopefully without encountering cats b) Hydrogen who had a tendency to watch them has eaten them as a kitty snack by fishing them out of the pot in which case I should have put a lid on the put (I hadn’t done this so that insects would get in as a froggy supper) or c) they have mysteriously died and been consumed by the mark 2 tadpols leaving no trace.

I’m going for option a) and as far as my 3 yr olds concerned it is a cat free a)!

The Froggarium worked much better than I was expecting though which is great and we will definatly be doing this again next year.

Basically it has taught Jean about animals and plants all being connected ie it needs the pond weed, the plant, the snail, water lavea and the tadpols to actually work without all of this the tadpoles simply die :/

I am waiting to see if the mark 2 tadpols actually turn into anything now – they do seem very very behind.

Frog on the Run?

The frogs have been getting more and more climby and I can only see one in the Frogarium today :/ I have looked even removing the sitting stones and the plant but there is just no sign of it so I’m hoping it has climbed out and hoped away to saftey and is not residing inside one of the cats tummys!

Or behind the oven decomposing etc…