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Where We Left Off:
The Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency tackled an extraordinarily complicated case where there was new suspect around every corner. Eventually, we came to a conclusion about the baby fawn’s injured leg.
**WARNING: this case includes snakes.**
The Adventure of the Speckled Band:
It’s not everyday one ponders the question:Â Can snakes be trained? If you’re familiar with the Sherlock Holmes story whose title I have borrowed for this case, the plot involves a trained snake. The story came out in 1892. It’s not a spoiler. You’ve had time to read it.
Science Time!
We need to dive into a little bit of neuroscience. Hang in there!
We have to rewind back to July when Gus led me down the private road in the direction of the busy road. Gus has some healthy level of fear, but other times, he does let curiosity take over instead of using his cerebral frontal cortex where decisions are thought through with consideration. Therefore, my own nervous system kicked up and saw potential danger for him where he didn’t.
It’s the amygdala within your brain that is constantly scanning for danger. The amygdala is located near sensory bain structures: smell, vision, hearing. So you can imagine that this gland responsible for our impulse reactions plays games with what we see and why our sense of smell can trigger deeply rooted memories (good or bad).
I’m having trouble locating the source right now, but some scientistic of the brain coined the phrase:Â It’s a stick, not a snake! That’s meant to be a reminder that if you have a brain which is driven by fear, you shouldn’t jump out of your skin and have a panic attack when you see something that barely or peripherally resembles true danger.
What Did I See?
There was something long and brown on the pavement. It had white speckles almost like polka dots but more organic. Gus happens to LOVE playing with snakes—even if they are supernatural baby Gorgons, not mundane snakes. I don’t know one snake species from the next. I thought I knew precisely how to identify a King Cobra by the characteristic hood. Apparently there’s a snake out there able to mimic this in order to appear more threatening. The same can be said for the tried and true Rattlesnake of American Westerns. There’s a fake one out there passing itself off as a rattler when it’s actually harmless.
After I was over the immediate shock of the brown speckled thing on the ground, I picked it up. It was a gorgeous long feather! I couldn’t identify it right away, but there was something familiar about it. I asked Gus to take a sniff and he was unimpressed. He said nothing and walked away. #OhGus
I showed the feather to Oliver Winchester next. As our resident feather expert, Ollie was much more interested.
“This seems familiar.” Ollie’s curiosity was piqued. “I feel like I’ve seen many feathers like this before, but the scent escapes me. I can’t get a confident read on it.
To assuage my embarrassment of thinking this beautiful piece of aviary evidence was a snake, I later researced whether any snakes have spots. What comes up are lists of snakes that have patterns that aren’t stripes, but really aren’t spots either—not in the polka dot sense. A few come reasonably close:
- Speckled Kingsnake – this is top of the list as anything spotted, in my opinion (and apparently neither Gus nor Oliver care enough to have opinions on them; we can’t get The Cook involved because of her terrible phobia of snakes.)
- Speckled Racer – Pretty much tied for the top ranking is this specimen, one of the most beautiful and colorful snakes on the planet.
- Sidewinder
- Checkered Garter Snake
- Pygmy Rattlesnake
- Eastern Hognose Snake
- Plains Hognose Snake
- Mexican Hognose Snake
- Southern Hognose Snake
- Western Ratsnake
- Western Foxsnake
- Western Leaf-nosed Snake
We Know It Isn’t a Snake. Now to Identify the Feather!
I showed the feather to The Grumpy Old Man and we formulated a list of most likely bird types: hawks, owls, maybe a wild turkey. Birds have different kinds of feathers all over their bodies with a variety of colors and patterns. Blue Jay feathers and Mourning Dove feathers have similarities that I didn’t expect. Woodpeckers of many varieties have feathers that appear spotted when their seen individually, but make stripes when lined up together.
Gus, Oliver, and I finished our adventure. Gus required breakfast (as did I) before we could head into the office.
I had just sat down at my desk to migrate all the day’s photos to the computer when I heard Oliver yell for my attention.
“Auntie! Look!” he sat at the entrance to his personal office space on the bottom floor of the multi-level cardboard Winchester-Nabu offices.
Gus circled around and went underneath a nearby chair covered in a cream-colored homemade afghan.
“What do you have, Ollie?” I left my chair and crawled on the floor to be near him. I was quite surprised with what he discovered.
Next to his office and a large ball of soft yarn laid cat toy! It’s almost like a fishing pole in shape with a line at the end and an assortment of colorful feathers. This is one of their training tools for maintaining their feline instincts in case any of the birds break the rules.
“But what kind of feather is it?” Gus asked.
“And we have to determine if one broke off a toy and ended up outside accidentally; or if the bird species of this feather made a visit to the estate,” Oliver said.
I took the photos required and uploaded them to iNaturalist for the best guess.
Case Findings:
Our research determined that the unusual brown feather with white polka dots was from a guinea fowl. We don’t have any. The folks next door don’t have any; they even got rid of their chickens and rooster. However, Lord and Lady Theodore have chickens we’ve never seen. It’s entirely possible they also have guinea fowl up there.
We know that guinea fowl are fantastic to have around a backyard because, like opossums, they will eat ticks. Ticks are a problem here. Any of these birds would be welcome to visit the Winchester-Nabu estate!
Case Status: Closed
Resources:
It was probably Stephen Porges, Peter A. Levine, or Bessel van der Kolk. (Back to Paragraph ^)
45 Snakes with Spots (Brown Spots, Black Spots, and More) by Vy Nguyen at The Pet Enthusiast