Mr. Troutbend came in and said the pump in the river stopped working all of a sudden. We own water shares that allow us to irrigate our yards from the river.

He had a hard time getting off the hoses hooked to the pump so he removed the housing. It all looked okay, so he back flushed it. Down at the intake that is in the river he saw something white come out and thought maybe it was a fish, but when he got down there, it was the biggest snake he's ever seen up here. It had gotten sucked up into the pump, and its head was gone. He had to get a knife and cut it in parts to get it past the thing on the end of the hose. The pump had been working fine for a couple of hours, so it probably got sucked up this afternoon.

He couldn't figure out what kind of snake it was, probably just a large version of the dull brown snakes we get around here that can swim, and we sometimes see around the yards catching insects. They aren't poisonous and don't even have fangs, but still they are snakes, not my favorite animal by a long shot.

Anyhow, I sure am glad this happened while he was here so I didn't have to deal with it on my own. I don't know what I would have done, probably left it there in the river to rot into small enough pieces to break loose and go downstream.

On a happier note, we saw the mink today grabbing chicken bones off the river bank. It's nice to see him back even though he might poach some of our fish out of the river. At least he doesn't chop down every tree in sight like the beaver.