The Green Snake

When I was a schoolboy, I read an article in a popular magazine entitled “Seeing the Green Snake.”  In those days, I was interested in hanging every kind of trophy on my wall, so the story was irresistible.  I dreamed of bagging one of these rare reptiles.  As I read, I learned that the term “seeing the green snake” was the Russian equivalent of our “seeing pink elephants.”  I felt grossly misled.  Apparently, some Russian men were over-imbibing Russian vodka and hallucinating about snakes.  After I saw a few Russian women, I felt a deep sense of sympathy for the men.  Then, there are the Russian men.  I never learned what the women drank, but I am convinced they are fully justified.  I wish all Russians a happy life with all members of the Russian opposite sex, whatever they may be.

That experience pretty much ended my interest in green snakes.  Later experiences ended my interest in pink elephants, too.  Finally, I arrived at a point in life, where I no longer desired blasting one of God’s creatures into eternity.  In fact, I now go to extremes in sparing animals of every sort, given my murderous beginning.

In the past few days, my luck and one possibly helpless animal’s life ran out.

I was on track for a near-record time on my morning bicycle ride.  As usual, sweat was running into my eyes and my visual acuity changed as I moved between full sun and heavy shade.  The heat is oppressive.  I think that is why snakes tend to slither onto the concrete trail in the heaviest shade.  They look exactly like twigs or branches from even a short distance.  As an aside, I have risked a grisly end, avoiding serpents lying in the shade appearing to be tree limbs.  Lesser snakes, twig caliber, are less threatening.

That brings us to my ride of just a few days ago.  As I said, I was making excellent time.  I rushed up a steep hill and across a small bridge, into a long stretch of intense sunlight.  My pupils must have been the size of microbes as I sped toward a patch of shade.  I have a trained eye, but the green snake was a few feet from my front tire when I recognized his/her peril and mine.

Like a news crawler in Times Square, my brain finally alerted me: “The two foot long green twig directly in front of your tire is a dangerous looking snake!”

I could do nothing.  Dodging left would put me over a 50-foot cliff.  On the right sturdy trunks would do to me what I did not want to do to the snake.  I had milliseconds to act.  That is the moment I began studying the snake in detail.  My faint hope was the cleats on my tires would miss the animal.  Failing that miracle, I hoped I was looking at a common garter snake.

In the expanded time that comes with emergencies, I noticed the snake was a darker green on its back than its sides.  The snake’s sides were a bright, light green.  They were almost chartreuse.  

“Wish I had a motorcycle that color,” I thought.

Using my expanded sense of time, I analyzed further.  The reptilian head looked wrong.  It had a small head, but shaped more like a constrictor or a mamba.

“This is just perfect,” I thought.  “I am about to run over and piss-off a pigmy Green Mamba or Burmese Python.  They may never find my body, just the bicycle and my garish suit.”

I pulled up on my handlebars, struggling to fly over the little package of death.

I had no luck.  I continued to the end of the trail and made a sad turn toward home.   I resolved to look for the little terror on the way back, hoping he would be gone, having slithered away to poison or crush someone else.

Alas, I found him coiled in a strange “S-shaped coil exactly where we first met.  He looked annoyed, but he was not moving.  I gave him a respectful berth as I passed, slowly.

The next day he was gone.  My guess is a crow, dog, or cat made a meal of him [or her]. 
I could only imagine the showy reptile had rejoined the Great Circle of Life.  [Cat poop?]

I am sorry, Ruth.  Next time, I will try to mail you a live specimen.