I took the waste basket of recyclables down to the garage this morning, discovered that the car and Mary were still out; however, in the middle of the garage floor was a fairly young rat snake, about one and a half to two feet long. At first I thought the snake might be dead. I nudged him or her, “it” from now on, with the empty waste basket. It raised its head a little, not dead, but appeared to be somewhat sluggish yet. Cold concrete does that to me too. In any case I decided I had better move the snake before Mary and the car returned and turned the snake into brown goo.
About that time I heard the Murphy girls in their front yard across the way, Ava and Maeve, with their mother, Caitlin. It occurred to me to pick the snake up, take it three houses down the street to show them. The only problem about picking things up is my severe peripheral neuropathy; I can’t feel things for the most part, things like snakes, for example, and truth be told, before picking a snake up, I always think of the Emily Dickinson poem, “A narrow fellow in the grass,” that ends with the narrator experiencing “zero at the bone.” Yet, I like snakes in the garden and on the ground but not in my numb hands, necessarily. Snakes are intriguing and interesting, as long as I don’t have to pick them up, though I have done that often enough in the past, especially if they are eating fish from our pond.
Well, I picked this guy up but missed getting it just behind the head, so of course it whipped around and bit me. I didn’t scream or drop the snake and it soon gave up gnawing on my hand, this time. It is a very odd sensation holding a snake that I cannot feel in my hand. I kept trying not to squeeze too hard as it flicked its dark tongue in and out, though it was managing to move through my fist till only its head was sticking out over my fist, with the rest of itself wrapped around my wrist and arm. I got it to the Murphy’s without further incident, showed it to the girls, and the Ramsay kids, Graham and his sister, who were also there. Everyone was much interested, especially Graham, who came up close and asked what kind of snake it was. Good for him!
Since I was still having trouble holding the snake without hurting it, I beat a hasty retreat, readjusted the snake—it bit me again—and looked for a good place to return it to the wilds of Fairway Drive. About halfway home the wily serpent slipped out of my hand and landed on the street. This time I just shooed it toward the runoff, watched as it slithered into the grass and disappeared. May it have good hunting and grow into a fine rodent catcher. The boney structures in the snake’s mouth managed just to break the skin on my left hand, leaving two sets of very tiny red dots, my red badges of courage? I really don’t like picking them up bare handed!
It occurred to me, further, as I was putting the photo on the page that the much smaller garage snake was marked like last year’s much larger deck snake. Of course, those particular markings make them look a little like copperheads. Shudder! [See both photos.] Their heads were very similar too, that is, similar to each other. The garage snake could be one of its kids, one of its hatchlings. How neat is that?
