They are extraordinary aren’t they? Really lucky to have them in your garden.

I’d say they probably were adders if you caught them basking on the path. In general grass snakes are more common, but they typically get out of the way at the slightest disturbance, so all you usually see of them is their tails vanishing in to the undergrowth. Adders aren’t as quick off the mark, so are more often seen on paths. They prefer heathland and more open, sunny spots, where grass snakes go for longer grassy areas and often are near water.

That is assuming that it was actually a snake. Slow worms are often mistaken for snakes and will also spend time basking on tracks. They are usually much lighter in colour and have a smooth pale, metallic bronze look.

Adders are more obviously scaled and are a deeper grey or brown colour with a very distinctive dark zigzag pattern on their backs.

They almost certainly won’t have been smooth snakes or anything else though.

Hmm - that’s Yahoo for you. I try to avoid it as mush as possible. I couldn’t find the same piece elsewhere at the time, but a month on this looks like the same article..

After a tense 3-way tie, a tie-breaking roll of the die resulted in this atmospheric woodland shot by YungOnions becoming the winner and our new summer banner.

As /u/[email protected] suggests, that certainly looks like sand that has been washed out by water around the hole, so I don’t know whether that’s relevant.

Either way, the hole itself doesn’t look like a badger snuffle hole or latrine, so I’d say fox is more likely.

At the point where you and the AI can see someone straightening their tie in a certain way and you and the AI can exchange a single wordless glance and you both burst out laughing 'cos it was just like that thing that you both saw 6 months ago and found hilarious then - then maybe.

Not before.

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If you have some late entries and can get them over to me before midnight, I will delay putting up the voting thread till then!

A few things off the top of my head:

• I made a particularly tasty shakshuka over the weekend.
• I saw a stoat leading her kits nose to tail, so that they looked like a single, bounding, furry snake as they crossed the track a few days back. I have only seen stoats doing that twice before in my life.
• in Forge of Empires, which I have recently started playing, my defending PvP army successfully defeated a challenger: the first time that has happened, and it left me feeling ridiculously happy.
• Albert Finney and Sean Connery’ interaction in the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express
• My partner’s pleasure at completing a 1940s style knitted top. It has turned out extremely well.

I don’t think that Smokey the Bear featured in PSAs for this in the UK.

Rupert the Bear, possibly, but not Smokey.