Enough Already -

Okay so this is like snake #2 in 3 days sitting at my back door.  However get this... I opened my mouth too soon and he must have heard me because the cat sitting next to this snake was MILO.  Yes Milo, the one that I said typically only brings me live lizards, drops them near my feet some place and then walks to the food bowl for his treat in return.  

So now I am terrified to step out onto my patio.  For I see Milo sitting there and I am calling him in and mind you it is 10:00 pm.  He isn't coming and and he just sits there, so I of course go to pick him up in annoyance at him and all of the sudden this brown that blends in with my brown door mat moved just enough to catch my eye.  I look and right next to my right foot all curled up is this snake.  

The first thing I noticed was his head (slightly triangled) and so I freak out.  "OMG, bad snake, bad snake" is all I could seem to say.  So I grab Milo toss him away from the snake.  And sitting on the table from Sunday was the net.  So I grab the next and I toss it over the snake.  He is a feisty thing too. 

I run in and I grab the "thong" from the kitchen and I grab this little bug capture thing Hunter has. I grab the snake and slowly pick it up and put it in the bug capture.  This snake strikes by the way.  I am literately shaking while I am doing this and of course with all the noise I was making, Hunter comes running to see all the excitement. I quickly tell him to shut the door that this is a BAD snake.  

So the snake is inside the bug thing and the bug lid on top is a magnifying glass so here I am studying the snake as he keeps striking at me.  I have to admit the little guy made me jump a couple of times.  Hey man he didn't look so small looking through the magnifying glass.  LOL 

So I go in and I do one of my favorite things, and I think it is one of my favorite things because I love to learn and I feel I learn something new all the time... and that's GOOGLING! So I googled the snake.

As it turns out it is a baby "Brown Water Snake" in which can appear and be confused with the cottonmouth water snakes.  Brown water snakes have all the appearances of that of a poisonous snake, such as the head shape, color and location. 

All this time I am thinking what am I going to do with this "BAD" snake and how did Milo not get bitten by it.  

So of course after my "google research" on the snake, I realized Milo my super brave kitty #2, brought to me a baby brown water snake.  In one of the research things I found it said this:

Conservation Status: Brown watersnakes are common in our region and are not protected. However, like other watersnakes, this species is often mistaken for the venomous cottonmouth because of their coloring, habitat, and slightly triangular head. Sadly, this ignorance leads to the needless killing of many watersnakes annually.

Okay so how in the heck am I to kill a baby brown water snake after reading something like that?  And I don't want to leave it trapped in that bug thing all night either so I can think about it and have bad dreams over it.  So I go get my fancy UGGS, I get the pink gloves, I get the thong... (I need to take a picture of my very fashionable, snake catching gear) and I pick up the snake inside the bug catcher.  I walk it to the back fence and I toss the entire bug catcher, hoping it would open and the snake would escape. NOOOO... of course the lid didn't open.  By now I am about to pee my pants, for it is dark, I can barely see anything and I am thinking "what if there is more snakes where I am standing now".  YIKES!!!  So I then lean over and I quickly take the thongs and tap on the lid causing it to open.  I jumped back and ran inside and locked the door (as if the snake was going to chase me back or something) and I look out the window to see if I can see the snake leave.  I couldn't it was too far away and too dark.  

So there you go.  I didn't kill the baby brown water snake... I learned a thing or two tonight about different types of water snakes and now I need to go give MILO a big fat rub down and some extra treats and hope that he doesn't feel the need to bring me another any time soon and he showed me that he isn't just some lazy lizard catcher after all.  SMILING! 

Baby Smiles or like Drugs ---

Baby's first smiles give mom's brain a buzz

Tiny grins light up reward centers that lead to quality care, study says

Any mother who's ever felt a jolt of joy at her baby’s first grin knows how intoxicating that can be.

Now, scientists at the Baylor College of Medicine say there’s more to the baby buzz than just a rush of happy feelings. Turns out that seeing your own child smile actually activates the pleasure receptors in the brain typically associated with food, sex  — and drug addiction.

“It may be that seeing your own baby’s face is like a ‘natural high,’ said Lane Strathearn, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Baylor and and Texas Children's Hospital who studied the brain reactions of 28 first-time moms.

“We know similar brain circuits are activated,” he added. “Whether that feels the same as a shot of cocaine, I’m not sure.”

Strathearn and his team used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the mothers' brain reactions to photographs of their own 5-month to 10-month-old babies and those of others in three emotional states: happy, neutral and sad.

As expected, the sight of their own happy babies sent blood rushing to the moms’ brain regions associated with dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in addiction. The spike rewarded the mothers with a neural kick that prompted them to want to take action to care for their babies, Strathearn said.

“It makes sense biologically,” said Strathearn, whose work is published in the latest issue of the journal Pediatrics. “It establishes that bond between parent and child.”

The work is important, Strathearn said, not only because it documents the brain activity of healthy moms, but also because it could provide a baseline for studying the brains of abusive or addicted mothers and lead to possible interventions.

"We want to understand what happens in this relationship with mothers and babies," added Strathearn, who is a research associate in Baylor's Human Neuroimaging Laboratory.

No spike for crying babies

Surprisingly, however, the moms in the study didn’t respond as strongly to their own infants when their expressions were neutral — or when they were in distress. The neural scans showed the mothers responded to all crying infants about the same, by activating areas of the brain involved in conflict.

“We were expecting a different reaction with sad faces,” Strathearn said. Although it’s not exactly clear, that could mean that mothers are wired to react to all crying babies, not just their own.

The new study provides important insights into maternal responses to babies' emotional cues, said Regina Sullivan, a researcher at Joe LeDoux's Emotional Brain Institute, which is affiliated with the National S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and New York University.

But it doesn't clear up one big mystery of brain study: Are the documented brain reactions the result of instinct or socialization?

"We don't know whether this response is learned or innate," Sullivan said. "People tend to think that we're innately good parents, but it so happens that parenting in humans and in non-human primates has to be learned."

‘It's got to be like crack’

Whether she responded because of instinct or expectation, the results of the study were no surprise to Katrina Lyons, 39, a Houston high school science teacher who joined the research project three years ago, just before the birth of her first son.

Lyons said it’s hard even to describe the joy she felt at the sight of Aiden’s first smiles or those of his brother, Jack, who is 1.

“Does it feel like a high? Oh, yeah,” said Lyons, who surrounds herself with photos of her boys. “It’s got to be like crack. I just have to see them everywhere."

The Pediatrics study focused on the brain reactions of well-educated, middle-class mothers, but it could have implications for others. Moms who are depressed, for instance, typically fail to respond to their smiling babies.

And other studies have shown that using cocaine, a drug that activates the dopamine reward systems, might interfere with the brain perks prompted by smiling babies. That could explain high rates of child abuse among cocaine-addicted mothers, Strathearn said.

Other scientists are looking at the effects of infant emotions on fathers, but the current study was limited to biological mothers and babies, Strathern noted.

His work was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Kane Family Foundation, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

If the research can help, Lyons said she was happy to participate.

“I think that’s good for all babies,” she said. “Everybody deserves a mama who loves them.”