Given the choice, my husband would spend his life outside in the garden. That’s where he was when I pulled into the driveway last Saturday. I rolled the window down to greet him.
“We found a snake,” he said.
Such power in four small words. From the safety of my two-ton SUV, I shuddered and let out a high-pitched shriek.
“It’s just a little snake,” he said, like that matters. The little ones come from the big ones.
“What kind is it?” I said. “Where did you find it? Where is it now?”
A curious plastic jar sat lopsided on the lawn. Inside a clump of green grass rested where salted caramels from Sam’s Club had once been housed.
“He’s in the jar,” said my husband.
I parked and approached. The lid was on tight. Condensation clouded the sides.
“He’s going to suffocate! Take off the lid!” I said. Vacillation immediately followed. “No, don’t take off the lid. Can he get out?”
I held the makeshift terrarium up to the sky to see the snake. His brown body lay tensed in a knot under the grass with his pale, segmented belly pressed against the bottom of the jar.
I’d seen his scaled back before in tissuey shells of skin draped over wire shelves in the attic and terra cotta pots in the garage. And I’d seen his belly before, too.
Last fall, while recovering from minor surgery, I thought I’d dreamed that belly. Still woozy from painkillers, I stepped onto the front porch to take out the dog and saw the writhing, pinkish belly tumble down the steps just beyond my feet.
The belly rolled to show a muddy back, melted into the drab brick sidewalk, and slithered away under the mulch. My spacey eyes focused in time to catch a tail disappear in the pine needles.
In the months since, I convinced myself it was the opioids talking. I couldn’t remember movies I knew I’d watched as I convalesced, so I must have also hallucinated.
But seeing this snake in this jar in my yard five months later confirmed the truth. I’d seen a snake then. Not this little snake. But a relative? A sibling?
Seeing a snake has always been a big deal in my neighborhood.
Where I grew up, the street could be empty until someone saw a snake. In seconds, word of the sighting shimmied across two dozen houses, shaking children out of doors, away from Nintendo and reruns of The Andy Griffith Show.
Adults poured after us, arms spread like seat belts to restrain us from running headlong into the threat of fangs. We gathered barefoot around the animal, hearts beating together in a drum circle of sorts. Children, parents, reptile.
The condition of the snake didn’t much matter. Dead, alive, or being hunted by someone’s father, the excitement was in bearing witness to the creature.
The type of snake it was didn’t matter either. Without fail, all of them were ruled to be cottonmouths or copperheads. The most docile common garter was filled with poison. The skinniest smooth green, outfitted with venom.
In reality, there was danger in the possibility of being bitten by viperous water moccasins or copperheads, both native to North Carolina. But looking back, I suspect our fear was less that the snakes we saw were vipers and more because of the rarity of the sightings. We didn’t see snakes very often; it was surreal when we did.
And snakes are so unlike us in form, so alien. We quicken on the occasions we come in contact with them. We shiver at the realization that even though we rarely see them, they surround us.
The small brown snake in the jar wasn’t moving much, so I took off the lid and stood back. My son emerged from the backyard. He knelt down and clinically narrated his observations. David Attenborough would be proud.
“Small brown snake, about 10 inches in length,” he said. “Eats worms and slugs. Lives under the mulch. Peaceful, quiet, harmless.”
The longer we watched, the more active the snake became. He untied his body and stretched it out along the bottom edges of the jar.
His head was not the telltale triangular shape of the copperhead or water snake. It was rounded, almost identical to his tail, except for two tiny, black beady eyes and the nearly imperceptible flick of a thread of tongue. The snake lifted his sinewy neck, exploring the sides of his captivity.
“He’s going to figure this out soon,” I said.
My son and I carried the jar with the snake in it down to the edge of the woods at the bottom of our backyard.
“Wait,” I said. “I want to get a picture of this.” I leaned over and positioned my phone as my son tipped the jar.
My finger was on the button, but before I could snap the picture, the snake slid out of the jar, curled his body down into the cedar mulch, and completely disappeared. Two seconds, three seconds tops, and he was nowhere to be seen.
I stood up to catch my breath. Chills spread across my skin. The woods seemed to encircle us. Trees, grass, underbrush—a thin veil of camouflage. I looked down again and suppressed the urge to dig.
* * *
And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. 2 Kings 6:17
(for the full story click here)
You were reaching through the storm, walking on the water, even when I could not see. Not for a Moment, Meredith Andrews.
What’s your snake story?
