Walkthrough

I've Spent 28 Years Pondering The Wild World Of My Home

NASHVILLE — Though it is still more than three weeks from the summer solstice, Memorial Day is the unofficial first day of summer, and already it is hot here. Every day now, temperatures rise well into the 80s, sometimes as high as 90 degrees. At both a global and a local level, the life-obliterating fallout of excessive heat becomes clearer with every passing summer, but this is a wonderful, old-timey kind of summertime heat: soft and damp and breathing.

Butterflies and bees and wasps, who can't fly when it's chilly, are on the wing now, and reptiles are likewise swift again. The dearest baby gray rat snake was crossing our driveway the other day just as the dog and I were leaving for a walk. The tiny snake froze into that zigzagged tableau of fear so characteristic of rat snakes when they are afraid. It was holding so still I thought it was a windfall twig. Even Rascal walked right on by.

In the pollinator garden, new seedlings and perennials alike are bolting in this glorious heat. The passionflower vines alone put on several inches of growth every day. I am in love with passionflower. Its extravagant blossoms feed the bees and butterflies. Its leaves feed gulf fritillary caterpillars. Its fruit feeds everybody.

Last winter, we lost a lot of perennials to a brutal freeze that came suddenly on the heels of an unseasonable warm spell. Some of those plants have returned from the dead, but others are truly gone, and their loss has created a space for new life.

A lovely native grape has sprung up beside the pokeweed plants at the end of the privacy fence between our driveway and the driveway next door. The grapevines are running along the fence, curling among the blackberry canes and the passionflower vines. Our neighbor installed the fence decades ago, and it isn't much of a fence anymore. Only a few yards long, falling to ruin, it nevertheless sets a banquet every summer for wildlife. Long before the pears on the ancient backyard tree are ripe, long before the holly berries and the cedar drupes and the acorns are ready to eat, there are pokeberries and blackberries and passion fruit right beside our driveway. Soon there will be wild grapes, too.

Plants that show up on their own are called volunteers, but of course they don't truly just show up on their own. The seeds are carried on the wind or in the bellies of birds or on the coats of animals. They take root wherever they find a welcome landing. The seed that grew into this grapevine, like the pokeweed plant it sprouted next to, came from a bird perching on that falling-down fence. When the seed landed, it found a sunny spot in a sheltered place beside a yard free from lawn poisons. My wild neighbors did the planting.

Perhaps my favorite volunteers this year are the pumpkin vines planted last fall by the thumbless hands of squirrels. Come fall, there will be pumpkins to feed the squirrels and the chipmunks and the raccoons and the foxes and the opossums who spent summer feasting on berries and grapes and passion fruit. All because we did nothing but let the wild world run wild in this half-acre patch of suburbia.

Out in the meadow where our yard used to be there is a beautiful new stand of bluestem goldenrod and another of tall ironweed, neither the result of my toil. When the monarch butterflies are migrating south next fall, these splendid flowers, yellow and purple, will feed them on their journey.

I didn't see any monarchs heading north this spring, but any stragglers who might yet arrive will find plenty of milkweed waiting for them. Monarch caterpillars can't survive without milkweed, the only food they evolved to eat, and my pollinator garden offers three varieties. Their flowers will feed many pollinators even if monarchs never arrive.

For wildlife, the usual fervor of springtime has mostly settled down now. The broadhead skinks are still pairing off, but most of the squirrels and rabbits and songbirds who nest here have sent their first set of babies out into the world and are readying for Round 2. The female Eastern bluebird is brooding another clutch of five eggs in the nest box in the front yard, and the male American robins are back to their dueling ways. Leaping from the ground and crashing into one another, they are competing to claim this insect-buzzing territory for their own second broods.

The gentle Virginia opossum who comes out just past dark to nose around the yard is so large, I think she must have a pouch full of babies. She has taken to sleeping the day away beneath our family room, tucked in tight between the floor joists and the concrete patio that the room was built on top of. For me, there is no sign of her when she is curled up in that perfect opossum-size hidey-hole, but several times a day Rascal will park himself directly above the place where she is sleeping. He barks and scratches at the floor until I manage to hush him. I was once the mother of tiny babies, too, and I want that poor mama possum to have some peace.

One night my husband heard a crash on our back deck, and he assumed the possum had climbed up to sniff around at human level. But when he turned on the light, an armadillo scurried behind a potted plant. When did an armadillo arrive in this yard? I have no idea. In 28 years of pondering the verdant life of this place, I'd never seen one here before.

I am always watching and listening, but the more I learn about the creatures with whom I share this ecosystem, the more I understand how much I do not understand. Why is the tail of one squirrel completely bald? How has the white chipmunk, who has no camouflage at all, managed to escape the many predators here? Why has a different chipmunk started hanging out with the skinks on our front stoop? I don't know, but there they are, afternoon after afternoon, dozing in the sun together. Their delight is my delight, too.

Margaret Renkl, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the books "Graceland, at Last" and "Late Migrations." Her next book, "The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year," will be published in October.

Virginia Homeowner Comes Across 2-foot Venomous Copperhead — And It's Not The Only Snake In The Den

A Mechanicsville, Virginia, woman spotted a copperhead snake near the crawl space of her home, which may be the least of her worries.

Richard Perry of the Powhatan-based Virginia Wildlife Management and Control (VWMC) told Fox News Digital his privately owned wildlife removal company deals with snakes nearly every day.

Virginia Wildlife Management and Control retrieved a 2-foot copperhead from a home in Mechanicsville, Virginia last week. (Virginia Wildlife Management and Control)

On Tuesday, his company removed a five-and-a-half-foot black rat snake from a person's garage, and the day before, they retrieved a two-foot copperhead from a woman's driveway.

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Copperheads are common in central Virginia, and Perry said his company comes across the venomous serpents between six and 12 times a week.

Last week, he was called out to a home about 50 minutes away in Mechanicsville, after an electrician doing some work on faulty wiring inside a home found a copperhead inside the crawl space of a woman's house.

When Perry arrived, he looked around in an area he hesitated to call that of a hoarder.

A woman in Mechanicsville, Va., found a copperhead near the door of her crawl space. (Virginia Wildlife Management and Control)

The space was "jam packed with stuff," he said, and he told the woman there was no way he was going to find any type of snake there.

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But he gave an honest effort.

"We went up underneath that house and it was loaded with snake skins, not copperhead skins, but she had a lot of rat snake skins under there," Perry said. "She had some that were four, five, six feet long."

After crawling out, Perry asked the woman if she was aware that the copperhead was not the only snake occupying the space. She asked him if he was serious, and he said he was "dead serious."

He then showed the woman several pictures of snake skins he took while in the crawl space. She was shocked.

Virginia Wildlife Management and Control captured a copperhead venomous snake in Mechanicsville, Virginia. (Virginia Wildlife Management and Control)

Perry and his team set a few snake traps underneath the house and told the woman to leave them alone unless a snake is captured. If that happens, he told her, she should notify him, and he would come remove the snake.

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One of the traps captured a rat snake, and after notifying VWMC, she tossed the snake and the trap.

A few days later, she called back and said a copperhead was at the doorway of her crawl space.

The woman insisted they come remove the snake. With a 50-minute trip each way, Perry said the chance of the snake still being there when he arrived was "slim-to-none."

Miraculously though, it was still there when he arrived.

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The snake was lethargic and not moving much, more than likely because it had eaten a meal of frogs and lizards from underneath the house.

But as soon as he touched the snake, it came to life.

Perry said copperheads are not generally aggressive, but they are mainly mild-mannered.

Out of the three venomous snakes in Virginia — copperhead, timber rattlesnake and cottonmouth — the copperhead is the least toxic, he said.

"Your chances of ever dying from a copperhead bite is pretty much slim to none," Perry noted. "I don't ever say impossible because anything is possible…but you will wish you were dead. It will mess you up. It'll make for a very bad day."

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As for the woman's home where the copperhead was found, it is probably not the last time she will have a run-in with a snake.

"Her crawl space is just loaded," Perry said. "God only knows how many more snakes are underneath that house."

Greg Wehner is a breaking news reporter for Fox News Digital.

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She said the pest control specialist told her that some of the snakes had been living on the property — possibly in a den hidden under the house — for at least two years, based on their massive size.

Hall said she doubts that she is the first person to see the snakes at the house.

A representative of the real estate company Hall used to purchase the house told the news outlet that she would have been told about the snakes if anyone had seen them earlier.

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