Report From PIA – July 29
We went out to pick tomatoes tonight and found a snake that was caught in the netting. Crows had been feasting on the first fruits, so we covered the plants last week. I’m partial to how the green netting looks, and it’s very effective at keeping the birds and small animals away from the developing tomatoes.
Unfortunately, the snake’s head went through the net but the body, which is thicker, did not. The poor thing was pretty tangled when we found it. It’s a good thing we discovered the trapped reptile tonight…we were able to cut the netting so that the snake could slither off.
Now we know that the area around the tomatoes needs to be checked twice a day to be sure our bird and animal barrier doesn’t do more harm than good. We humans are good about solving problems to our benefit, and this is fine, but whenever possible we shouldn’t do so at the expense of other creatures.
It isn’t always easy to foresee how a simple solution for situation A might end up causing more problems to someone/something else. We have a responsibility to look ahead and try, as much as we can, to predict how our actions might cause a problem for others in the future.
And after a solution is put in place, we should repeatedly be checking to make sure that no snakes are stuck in our nettings.
These tomatoes are beginning to bear fruit - a full three weeks earlier than normal for this region.
