Well, last week you got to hear about the pigeon roosting nightmare at our house, and this week it became even more interesting. There was one place where we didn’t replace the bird netting with aluminum screening due to its inaccessibility. Upon hearing pigeon noises yesterday morning my husband leaned over the railing to take a look. Both of us were dismayed to find a poor little (about 3′ long) corn snake totally wound up in the bird netting. It looked hopeless, at first glance it appeared that the snake had sliced himself with the netting it was so tight. Never mind that the piece of bird netting was mounted in a wooden frame screwed to the side of our house three stories off the ground. It was hung using an extension ladder, which happens to be at our other house…
The difficulty factor of this rescue clearly was high, so we didn’t take any pictures while it was in progress. We figured we had less than a 50% chance of success and didn’t want any reminders of a botched attempt. Besides, time was of the essence, the poor little fellow probably had been stuck there overnight. First step – remove the wood frame from the house. This had to be done blind, my husband had to lay face down on the deck with one arm stuck through the railing with a crow bar. I leaned over the railing from the top and helped guide him so that he could pry off the frame without hurting the snake. Once that was done, the “snake in a frame” was lowered 3 stories by a rope to the ground below.
This is where I stepped in with a pair of scissors. Luckily the bird netting was easily snippable and i started to free the snake from the tail end up. As I cut him loose he started to wiggle, which made things a bit harder to deal with and he kept trying to insert his tail back in the netting. Silly snake, stop that. At this point hubby had to hold him still. Snakes are strong, even little skinny ones like this guy. Corn snakes are constrictors so they can be tough to straighten out. I wasn’t convinced that he would be ok, there were parts of him that were protruding and bulging through the netting, but as I carefully unwrapped him and clipped the tight spots he started to look like a regular snake again. Whew! It was such a satisfying feeling to put him on the ground and watch him happily slither away. He was such a beautiful creature.
My husband and I have a habit of being in the right place at the right time to save critters in distress. We have two cats that surely would have died if we hadn’t rescued them as kittens. The youngest one was trapped (and howling) in a storm drain. It took us two days, some tuna fish as bait and a squirrel trap to get her out. We also learned the delicate art of getting a hummingbird out of a garage. That could have been a disaster, because they beat themselves silly against ceilings and can die in a few short hours without nectar. Untold numbers of turtles have been rescued from the roads in our area. Neither one of us can stand by and watch an innocent animal in trouble. It just isn’t in our nature.
So, we saved a snake, but we gave the pigeons a great access hole. DOH! It was time to fix the pigeon problem correctly. Down came all of the aluminum screening. I washed all of the guano out of their favorite roosting location. That in itself was an hour long miserable, dirty, smelly task. Out came the mitre saw and up went custom cut and fitted pressure treated wood barriers. We will never have a pigeon problem in this spot again. We should have just fixed it right the first time. Less time, less money, and no traumatized snake would have been the result. Ah well, another lesson learned.
