Snakes In The Yard.

I don't think this is what Steve Earle had in mind.

Each night, dozens of slithering copperhead snakes make their way to Chuck Miller's yard.

It's a phenomena that, as of yet, has no explanation.

Nor is there an explanation for using "phenomena" as a singular, but that's beside the point.

Last year, there were "about 100" of the nightly venomous visitors.

But don't worry; the government's doing something about it.

Are they coming in and killing the deadly reptiles? No, no. That would make too much sense.

After Miller catches the snakes with a long-handled device, a graduate student takes them back to ASU, where a tracking device about the size of a grain of rice is inserted under the snakes' skin. The animals are then released back on Miller's property.

Because, God knows, tracking out the social habits of dozens of fangy killers is MUCH more important than protecting human lives, right?

Especially when such tracking can be easily thwarted by a relatively harmless king snake:

This year, something even more unusual happened.

A speckled king snake ate a copperhead that was tagged with a tracking device, Miller said. He found out the snake ate the copperhead when the graduate student used a transmitter and found the device inside the king snake, he said.

Your tax dollars at work doing something useless.

As usual.