Be Excellent To Each Other

So, I was in the garden with my kids, the boys were playing some shooting game (don't they always?) the girl was asleep, and Pauline and I were sorting out the shed. (Yes, shocking on Mothers Day too!) All of a sudden Eliot shouts over that he's found a snake. I go over and there's an 18" wriggly thing, that we eventually agree is a snake (it's got a tongue, no legs, and the underside is a different colour to the top side). So we watch it for a while and wonder what to do with it.

Eventually we let it go and it disappears into a pile of dead leaves (yeah, I haven't cleared the garden yet since autumn).

So I go online to try and find out what type of snake it is, and it turns out it's probably a slow worm:



Which is a type of legless lizard.

So there we go.

Anyone else ever had anything like that in their gardens?

Malc

Lucky sod. Slowworms are a protected species. If you've got a colony you'll need to inform... someone.

Ooh I didn't know that, btw that picture up there is "library footage" as the beeb like to put it. I didn't have a camera with me when I saw it.

Malc

Slow worms are acebest. We had adders in the garden when I was a kid (they multiplied ha ha), they'd leave their shed skins around the place, spookily.

Are normal worms fast worms?

SPEEDWORM

You might want to be careful with this.. someone told me once (it might be wrong mind) that if you have any protected species in your garden you're responsible and have to pay a certain amount of cash for something to do with a society or something..

Vague as that advice is, I wouldn't like parting with cash over something that could easily make it's way into the next street.

Mum has had two slowworms in her garden about a year ago. I'll ask her what she did if you want Malc? I'm sure she called the RSPCA (or some other place) hotline thing and asked for advice on them as she was worried they would bite the cats or something, but they apparently don't.

Other than that she has: Foxes, badgers, hedgehogs and the occasional deer that eat the new shoots through the mesh fence. She has a nature reserve behind her place and she gets all sorts of lovely creatures in/around/by the garden

Info on slowworms

They don't actually bite. If you like them and want to encourage them in your garden-get yourself a compost heap they also eat slugs and other icky things that eat your plants. 100% human friendly apparently

On the small note of foxes, there seems to be a few round my place, and my brother in law a 10 minute walk round from mine has seen them in his garden. ut anyway the point o fmy post I havent got a garden in my parents place at the moment but there a decent patch of grass outside and werre not far from a big cemetary. I've just walked home from my brother in laws ( I should really say sisters thinking about this) But there was a fox right in the middle of this green, and I was coaxing it towards me, traditional cat and dog tempting methods failing but it got to about a metre away from me , eating grass, the uncultured fuck and then I went round to bush to try coax him from there but it fucked off and I was gutted.

end of story sorry, I do hope he has a good life and gets all apples to his hearts content.

I used to play with those as a kid - I can remember putting one in my sister's coat pocket. I haven't seen one for years though. This also reminds me of the morning I spotted a bright green snake, which also had a red and black band around it's neck (fuck Skeletor, do snakes have necks?) - spent hours trying to find out what it was and it transpired that it was a young grass snake.

If you find young Adders in your garden, keep the kids away as I believe like a lot of venomous creatures, their toxins are far more powerful while they're young.

If you leave them unchecked they'll start to multiply.

We have a bunch of slowworms in the garden. They're acebest. They're a bit pinker underneath than that one though.

Mainly Squirrels and partially alive furry things the cats bring back and fling with gay abandon around the grass.

Once though my ex girlfriend had otters in her back garden (they had a stream running through there - bloody lovely it was)

Haemoroid euphemism?

Does anyone remember when there was a flatworm invasion and Blue Peter were telling kids to get on their BIG STAMPY BOOTS and get squishing?

Beeb sanctioned genocide? I loves it!

<starship troopers>

I'm doing my bit

</starship troopers>

I always suspected you'd be mashed off your face on speedworm. Druggie.

Considering we live in the middle of Stockport, our garden is veritable haven for animals.

We've had a fox, woodpeckers, a sparrowhawk stayed around for a while. Starlings nest in the roof where there is a missing brick. We had a duck land next to me while I was putting the washing out. (Got some bread and fed it). A family of squirrels were living in one of the trees - they went to the other end of the garden to give birth, you would hear this squeak and then the male squirrel would hop across the lawn and through the trees with a new born in his mouth, taking it back to the nest.

Cleared a lot of the garden yesterday and put some chickenwire in to stop the cats. It is incredibly unnerving to be watched by 10 or more pairs of beady eyes, all of them waiting for me to finish. Went inside and within ten minutes, two woodpigeons are walking around the freshly mowed grass, a family of starlings is getting shouted at by one of the robins, blackbirds are hopping about picking up worms and the hedge is playing host to a Great Tit, Coal Tit and Tufty the Blue Tit. (Third year running he has decided to live in our hedge.)


Birds are great. Wild birds doubly so.

Also if you are annoyed/worried about cats in your garden (not your own obviously) because they are killing the wildlife then pop down a plastic snake* by their entry area (fnar) as they hate snakes...or nick Malcs Slowworm

*This apparently works very well

A snake with a hoover would work much better.

You can have bananas from my private stock for that as it made me chuckle muchly

You have a private stock of bananas? What are you? Fred Goodwin or something?

Haven't seen these in a while, they used to live under the rocks / general rubbish in the waste ground by the flats where I work.
Lot more prevalent when I was a kid, in fact haven't seen one for 2 years or so and that was in the back garden.

Used to go looking for them when I was younger and bought some back home in a cardboard box, they escaped into the back garden and turn up now and then. Before then they weren't on our side of the road at all.



No, if they are like the cats near us, they are a source of interest to them and generally something to be hunted or at least investigated with a casual paw. In fact, if anything, the Slow Worms need to be protected from the cats.