Wooded Facelift

One of the things we love the most about where we live is our backyard. We have a lot of woods and have been blessed with visits from all kinds of wildlife. The woods area, though, wasn't too friendly to yours truly as it had a lot of over growth, which included its share of poison ivy. We decided to hire someone to come and clean a lot of it out, including some dead trees. We figured it would expand the usability of our backyard, eliminate some bugs, dangerous dead trees, and the dreaded poison ivy. Here is a "before" picture:

Here is a video of a 40-50 foot tree (dead) being taken down. It survived Hurricane Ike and plenty of pretty bad storms, but it was no match for this small backhoe.

We also found a new friend when we were checking out the final product. He was about 3-4 feet long and we think it might be a black rat snake (not yet an adult). If you know it is something else, let us know:

Here is the "after" picture (much nicer and more noticeable in person). Now we need to plant some grass seed.