Waiting for the Snake

This is the black rat (milk?) snake which I have been seeing about once a year for the last few years. It is condsiderably larger than it was the first time I saw it when it was just a tiny thing curled in the top of one of the shrubs in the front yard. It is now more than a meter and half in length. Today it slithered across the sand pile and into the little herb plot. I startled it with the camera, then spent nearly an hour playing peek-a-boo with it as it tried to re-merge from the railroad crosstie and I tried to video it. I like this snake and the fact that it chooses to live in our yard. Maybe it likes it that we don't use fertilizers or pesticides in the lawn.