u/olivemoonunit

Not hollow, concave, true gills that are white, snake skin pattern on stem, growing off of dead wood, smells very earthy.

We have been here(east Texas) just through late autumn- early winter since spring started dozens of these trees have grown up. When I try to look into them I'm thinking they are American persimmon growing up from an old root and that there was some in this area that may have been cut down by the previous owners. They are all through one side of my yard so I'm trying to figure out why someone would cut these trees down because they have shot up, some of them 10 ft in just a few weeks. If they are a problem I'd like to tackle it now but if their actual fruit trees I would like to let some of them grow and really can't understand why someone would just hack them out so deeply because I can't even find stumps for them like most of the other trees they cut down.

Truly though I suspect the previous owners just hated trees because they limbed all of them up so far I believe they must have used a fire truck. I need a helicopter to hang swings around here 😮‍💨

I was doing my evening walk around the yard looking for snakes and happened upon this guy or gal. I guesstimate 5ft long and a Black Rat snake or "Racer" but Google scared me off with cotton mouth at first so I dont have good pictures. When he started to move he went back towards my pond which is full of frogs and turtles.

Also, one day I moved a rock saw little dude and put it back and a week later my cats got to this little dude that looks very much the same 😭

Can I get a confirmation on the first and an ID on the poor little dude? I'm very new to IDing snakes.

Bonus a slow rat snake i met in April 🫶