Okay, I walked around in front of the house and found a snakeskin. DH said it's a rattlesnake skin....no, no, no...I'm getting paranoid now. Just yesterday, a large praying mantis killed a little hummingbird...BTW, the mantis won't have a chance to do that again. I was devastated! Now this! No, no...cold cruel world...no! And then there are bigger predators in this area.

Isn't it amazing that the Mantis was fast enough....and strong enough to capture the HB

(sorry for your loss, Linda....hard to witness such a beauty being taken)

I'd seen pics of that...with the praying mantis killing hummingbirds...but who really expects that? We have a family of Black-chinned hummers in this area...with a male and a female young ones...it was the younger female that was killed. I kind of felt guilty that I didn't just kill all the praying mantises!

I have a hard time witnessing how cruel nature really is too! Especially when it involves one of my favorite creatures. It's hard to put it in perspective sometimes!

Linda I understand about the snakeskins. Here's the one that caused my daughter to stop weeding the flowerbeds for me. I was thrilled it was her that found it instead of me. She can run alot faster and I would have just fainted. The skin was still wet so the snake itself was somewhere very close by.

If you click to enlarge the photo you can even see it's face/eyes on the left hand side of the screen. That picture is really weird and the first time I've seen a fresh snakeskin up close. As a matter of fact a little too close for me. LOL. Let's just say I've had my fair share of snakes this year. I guess that's what happens when you put a pond it the front yard close to the house.

Ooh...that's the whole snakeskin...I only have a partial one. Of course, the rest may be lying around somewhere. Here's a pic of the top. I'm just doubting it's a rattler.

I don't know what kind of snake mine are yours was. All I know for sure is where there's a snakeskin, there's a snake close by. Gives me the creeps just thinking about it. Yet, at the same time I think it would be pretty neat to see a snake shed it's skin. Like for instance, you see in my photo where it's head and eye's were, and it's tail part is intake. So what does it do, breakout part of the middle section and wiggle it's upper and lower body parts out of the skin??? It's really interesting to think of how they shed it so it stays pretty much intact. Nah, I change my mind, I'd like to see it do it as long as it was in a cage or something LOL.

You do realize I'm not going to be able to go get the newspaper early in the morning now, in the dark ....where the guy throws it in the bushes...after seeing those pics?

Linda, that's such a shame witnessing the mantis kill the hummingbird. The mantis in my backyard seem too small to be a threat, but I have read about them catching the h. birds.

eek! whatever kind of snake,it must have been large too!! would not want to see the mantis get a hummingbird..no no!! It's hard enough seeing the robber flies I have hanging around my garden stalking the pollinators! But also saw one get a wasp and another got a horsefly...and that didn't bother me a bit!!!

Ever since I saw the snakes this summer, I'm a scare-d-cat, constantly looking around wherever I walk! Before that, I was walking around in high grass or the woods or wherever in my holy crocs!! I hope I get over it really!

The hummingbird was already dead when I saw that, something dangling from the branch caught my eye...the little hummer I named Sweetie, BTW. Sweetie was limp and dangling from the mantis' front legs (?) or whatever while it ate on her. The anger I felt then...well, I'm not naturally a person to get mad much, but that...that was a monstrous deed! I knew then the culprit's fate was sealed. But first...a pic to remind me in the future that the mantises must always be dealt with. Sorry for the grisly pic

Oh, and DH thinks that snake was a 5-footer, but hopefully he was over-estimating. I've never seen a 5-foot snake in this area. A little snake trivia...I read somewhere that you can be fairly sure there's no predatory size snakes around if your yard has lots of frogs and lizards. Well, we don't usually have frogs. The toads were around this year...not a whole lot, however. But come to think of it, I can't remember seeing any lately. I've see a few lizards lately, including this one that someone suggested is a Texas Alligator Lizard...it was trying to get away from me when I was trying to take this, so its head is hidden. If it is, that's supposed to be the largest lizard in Texas...obviously, this would have been a juvenile one.

oh my gosh Linda! what a shock that must have been. That's a pretty fat mantis but so is the hummer... I'm still shocked that it would prey on something so big, although like you said, I have heard of the mantis eating hummers!!

and that is a pretty big lizzard too, with snake-like colors!

We do get some big snakes here, that second chicken snake that I saw in the coop was definitely at least six feet long! And now that you mention it, there are way less frogs at our pond this year. We've been talking about that but thought maybe it was because the fish or other birds were eating them. We recently burned a pile of wood that has been sitting since the spring; some kind of big snake came crawling out... it was pregnant.