"Speaking of throwing things at a spouse" Years ago, the mother of a boy I was dating told me about the first breakfast she prepared for her career military husband. She was an "owl" rather than a "lark", & she had been pampered her whole life anyway. so the honeymoon was romantic, & then the newly-married couple moved into base housing, & New Husband had to get up at 5 AM to get to work. New Wife gamely gets up, too, puts on her beautiful negligee, & goes to the kitchen to make pancakes. & sits down at the table & dozes off, waking up only when the odor of burning pancakes seeps into her brain. As she's frantically trying to salvage the pan & fan away the smoke her dearly beloved appears in the kitchen doorway, guffaws, & chuckles, "Ah, the new bride in the kitchen." & turns around to leave. She said, "The sight of that smug neck retreating just *enraged* me, & I had a pancake sitting on the egg turner in my hand,so I flipped that pancake across the room, & it hit him smack on the neck & slid down onto his starched collar."

In the areas where hardware stores have their drop-ceiling materials, they should have a plastic grate that fits underneath fluorescent light fixtures. It's about 2' x 4', with 1/2" squares and maybe 3/8" thick and comes in white and "chrome" and is easily cut to shape with plain old wire cutters - it's not necessarily cheap ($14 or $15 a piece), but maybe this'll work for ya? I use this grating in my biofalls as a support for the filter mats and as a fence to keep the hyacinth constrained - worked great!

Hi Wayne. I was pretty sure it was a Milk Snake. The odd thing about it was the pattern, which is so much more like the "Intergrade" Milk Snake shown on plate 30 in Conant and Collins 3rd edition, or really like a Red Milk Snake. It was awfully large too; I have seen Milk Snakes, and they were rather smaller and had more of the pattern shown in the plate for the plain old Eastern (from the Boone area, collected by Wayne Vandevender). I am wondering if the "Intergrade" happens outside the Mid-Atlantic, and if we have them, or if it might be a rather odd color and pattern variation. Oddly, for all the years I have been catching and chasing snakes (probably over 50), and to live in Milk Snake range, I had never seen one. I saw your page Wayne. A neighbor of mine was proudly talking about her son killing a 5 foot rattlesnake, and I just walked away; I hope she heard me cussing and saying that the snake wanted nothing more than to live another day, and did not want to run into an ignorant human that just liked to kill things (he air guns squirrels and pigeons in the neighborhood; he was talking about air gunning Woodpeckers, and I offered to turn him in - federal crime! HAHAHA!). Ah well, we can only do what we can do...

Good outing Matt for August! Very interesting where the milks were found. That would seem to indicate they are moving and not just coming up to shed. We found our resident 19 inch milk this week again on our property. Last sighting was first of June. The same snake meaasured 19 inches last year also. Would have thought it would have grown some. Enjoyed your Yellowstone trip report!