Grass snakes and autumn rain
There’s a small farm near our workshop in Leicestershire where we have sometimes stored stone for our stone fireplaces. It has large areas of old concrete yards, and over the years the owner has seen lots of grass snakes on the edges of these concrete yards. He assumes it’s because the snakes ‘nest’ and breed under the concrete slab and that it gets warm in the sun…. which they like apparently.
Anyway, he hadn’t seen many this year, everytime we went down there with some stone, or a stone fireplace, we’d have a look around and see if we could see any, but to no avail. We did however find some skins (snakes shed their skins quite regularly) so we knew the elusive things were still there.
Anyway, it rained for the first time early this week, and whether they little things needed a shower or not we don’t know, but several appeared out on the concrete, apparently enjoying the feel of rainwater on them! Certainly that’s what it appeared like anyway. Some were only babies, about 6″ long, but the farmer has seen very large ones over the years. He’s glad to know the ‘colony’ is still doing well.
Don’t worry though, we give all our stone fireplaces a thorough check over before we deliver, so you won’t be unwrapping them and finding hissing sid waiting for you inside, we promise!