An Arkansas blog reader named Susan, who lives in Ferndale, forwards along the following photo recently snapped outside her back door of a large copperhead snake being devoured by a lovely speckled king snake. With the sixth largest city in the America underwater and seemingly half the western U.S. engulfed in wildfires, a better metaphor for the welcome waning of this treacherous summer, as shiver-inducing as it is, may not present itself before Labor Day.

Susan reports that in addition to the snakefight, last Saturday she was sitting in her living room when a very large black bear walked by her picture window with her faithful dog soon chasing it up a tree. Two days later the dog showed up bit by a poisonous snake in the face.

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She’s thinking of renaming her place Wild Kingdom, she said. Good idea, Susan.