Tuesday, September 22, 2009

So the Lowe's in West Philly (the one off 52nd St. just north of Lancaster Ave.) opens at 9am on Sundays. Two Sundays ago we didn't know that, so when I headed out for more paint for our new apartment at around 8:30am, I found it closed.

I suppose I could have sat in the car and listened to the radio, but I was just a stone's throw from the West Parkside Industrial Park, from which that shopping center had been carved, so I moseyed on over on Jefferson to look around.

Near the shopping center they have an artificial drainage pond meant to ease the flow of runoff into the storm sewers - always nice to see - and across the street from the pond I found a few piles of concrete chunks and other assorted trash.

It was wet and cloudy, so I wasn't expecting much, but I found two little brown snakes (Storeria dekayi) under the first chunk I flipped.



They were all I found, and again I found nothing a couple blocks up Jefferson where they bulldozed my beloved brown snake hibernaculum, but it was still nice to see snakes on such a spur-of-the-moment little trip.