The Serpents Tale

 

I saw two snakes on my walk the other day. That might not seem startling if you perambulate through the Everglades or along a southwest mesa, but my constitutional took me by San Francisco Bay, more specifically an estuary on the shores of which were upscale condos and offices. One of the slitherers was a garter snake. The other was a rattler.

A rattler you say? That’s what I said. The way it semi-coiled it’s muscled, lithesome body, looking at me across its diamond-shaped snout, through beady eyes, behind which he was no doubt etching my epitaph. At first I thought it might have been a cobra -- you know, the spitting kind -- and clearly of record length. If you grabbed a yardstick, you couldn’t barely measure its girth.

Okay, we’ll go back to the rattler theory which needed just a touch of modification because there were no rattles. A little thing like that shouldn’t hold back the intrepid raconteur, however; clearly, the critter had been caught, tail high, by the blade of a lawn mower, recently passed.

Courage, rather than fear, still held me to my spot, seeing this lethal, mythic tool of the gods, ready to impale me on its fangs of death, pump venom into my veins. I’d be gone before I hit the sidewalk and had time to write "Cheney did it" with the last drops of my blood.

We stared at each other, titans at high noon, and before he could grab me and drag me into the bay, I backed off. Discretion is often the better part of valour. Besides, my environmental instincts, nascent behind the battle of survival, reminded me that these huge serpents were good at keeping the rodent population in check.

From a safe distance, I touched my cap and went on my way. Later, scouring the web, I was surprised to discover that no one had yet posted a photo of this particular viper, at least not in the rattlesnake pages.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.

 

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