We had a surprise visitor in the middle of the day a couple of weeks ago. Stretched out across our tiny patch of grass in our backyard was a large snake. He or she had yellow stripes running the length of both sides of the dark brown body, round pupils and no rattles. Whew! Not a rattlesnake. I did some quick research on California Herps website and found that our visitor was likely a striped racer.
Striped racer snakes are lumped in with gopher snakes and eat small birds, lizards, frogs, rodents, small snakes and some insects. They are diurnal. We have had a lot of lizards darting around our yard this year. Our dog Bindi, a McNab – a type of herding dog, likes to hunt lizards. She doesn't do anything to them. She just stalks them and then stands frozen watching them. It's kind of a faceoff and pretty funny to watch. I am guessing that the snake found our backyard to be an all-you-can-eat buffet.
I was able to take a couple of quick pictures with my cell phone and then quick-as-a-flash, he or she zipped across the walkway and disappeared in the California fuchsia and under the fence into the safety of the neighbor's woodpile. I wonder if that snake is still around, though. There don't seem to be as many lizards. Hmmm.