A regular visit to my compost bin...

Xander Rander

...when I spotted this and lost 10 years of my life!



Luckily for me it was the common schleich snake found in all good retail stores. I also found a rhino and gorilla lurking near by, but the snake was something different that is for sure.

matt_fender

Ha! Had me fooled, that's for sure.

This guy was a regular in our compost for a couple of years - a really chunky slow worm, it must have been 18 inches long which I think is about as big as they get. It certainly made turning the compost a bit trickier since I didn't want to hurt it:

cornelly

I acquired a dozen or so slow worms a few years back put them in the compost heaps and never saw them again, the compost heaps two are pallet sized so plenty of room, they didn't like me ?.

Jellyfire

If the environment didn't suit their needs they would have gone off to try and find somewhere that did, the compost heap is just somehwere to get warm, they still need a huge range of other environmental factors to make a suitable home.
(They are also a protected species, so moving them to a new location is actually illegal.) 
The way to get slow worms, snakes, newts etc is really to create a good environment for them and hope they arrive of their own free will. Any wild animal with the ability to leave will more than likely do so if moved from another location 

Xander Rander

matt_fender said:

Ha! Had me fooled, that's for sure.

This guy was a regular in our compost for a couple of years - a really chunky slow worm, it must have been 18 inches long which I think is about as big as they get. It certainly made turning the compost a bit trickier since I didn't want to hurt it:

Wow that is huge! And I would have lost 20yrs if I saw that 😂 glad mine was made of resin 

cornelly

The reason I had the slow worms was that the place they were had been sold and the sellers didn't want them there when the new people arrived, didn't realise they were a protected species.

Fire

Beautiful creatures.