Snake

We were sitting outside in the shade enjoying the late afternoon warmth when we noticed Cleo looking at the gate nearby with great interest. Suddenly it all came into focus and we realised that a snake was neatly entwined in the spikes across the top of the gate. I had just finished throwing buckets of water under the shrubs and must have disturbed it. Initial panic ensued with the dog in mind, and we called our son to come outside to fetch her and at the same time call the snake catcher. He came running down the stairs and stopped with his head inches away from the snake, as we had omitted to give him its precise location in the heat of the moment. By then we were taking videos of this beautiful creature and had identified it as a very large boomslang, bigger than any I had ever seen and the first ever in our garden in 36 years. Panic receded as I knew it was not looking for trouble and hoped that it would find its own way out of the garden. As a precaution, I closed all the car doors and boot which had been open after cleaning, then the garage doors in case it wanted a cool place. Being a boomslang, it would prefer to be outside in a tree which also helped calm the nerves.
The snake man never did arrive, and we had ample opportunity to follow its progress along the fence, up the milkwood tree and outside, then back in again. It was evident that its destination of choice was the hedge on the other side of the driveway, and after 20 minutes and no snake catcher in sight, it crossed the driveway and slithered silently up into the branches, no doubt in search of an occupied nest. It will just have to go on its way.
I was reminded of a favourite poem that we studied at school back in the last century, one that remained in my mind forever as a perfect description of the relationship between man and snake - by D H Lawrence. It also taught me the effectiveness of alliteration and assonance in descriptive writing.

SNAKE:

A snake came to my water-trough

On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,

To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree

I came down the steps with my pitcher 

And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom

And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough

And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,

And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,

He sipped with his straight mouth,

Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,

Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,

And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,

And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,

And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,

And stooped and drank a little more,

Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth

On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.

The voice of my education said to me

He must be killed,

For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said,

If you were a man

You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,

How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough

And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,

Into the burning bowels of this earth?

 

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?

Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?

Was it humility, to feel so honoured?

I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:

If you were not afraid, you would kill him! 

And truly I was afraid,

I was most afraid,

But even so, honoured still more

That he should seek my hospitality

From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough

And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,

And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,

Seeming to lick his lips,

And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,

And slowly turned his head,

And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice a dream,

Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round

And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,

And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,

A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,

Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,

Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,

I picked up a clumsy log

And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,

But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.

Writhed like lightning, and was gone

Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,

At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.

I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!

I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

 

And I thought of the albatross

And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,

Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,

Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords

Of life.

And I have something to expiate:

A pettiness.