Egg stealer

 It’s springtime and I am now aware that snakes are out. I knew they were but I wasn’t too worried about it. That has changed a bit. I mean, I’m not going to live in fear of snakes. I live on a farm. I know they are here. I think I just don’t want to see them. Ronnie had found one and took care of it on Sunday morning. That was the first one I had seen on our property. I didn’t think much of it after that. Later in the day, I went out to feed the animals. I had a crate in the shop for when the ice storm hit to keep the cats warm. Since then, the chickens come in daily to lay eggs in there. I pick them up daily, so I wasn’t thinking of snakes. When I went to look in the crate earlier in the day, I noticed there were several but not all of the chickens had been in there yet, so I left them. I went to check on the eggs before I fed and something made me look up in the corner of the crate. I saw some of the eggs were missing... not a good sign. When I looked up in the corner, I saw the body of a snake. Not the head or the tail, but just a small portion of the body. I calmly walked out with Earl in my arms. I texted Ronnie and said there was a snake in the shop. He came out and sure enough, there was a snake. A big snake. He moved that crate and told me it was a dragon it was so big. I had to see it, not sure why I needed to, now I have nightmares and don’t want to go in the shop. This thing was huge. The snake is gone and hopefully we won’t have any more. When I started thinking about it, Earl had been sleeping up on the shelves and I thought I was crazy with counting eggs and seeing some missing, so now I think that the snake had been in there awhile. Luckily, I had not seen it before. And it didn’t come out and scare me but I did have this weird feeling the last several times I got eggs out of there. Good grief. I know it just wanted some food and it got some meals. But, I was nervous. No, it wasn’t a rattlesnake but I didn’t know that at the time. Now we have some moth balls in place and snake away stuff. Hopefully that will work. I also took the crate out and Ronnie chicken proofed the shop. I found all of the eggs in the goat pen today, Ronnie will have to see if he can snake proof that with moth balls and snake away. What an adventure this has been.