Sunday 2 September 2012

A Snake in the Pool

In my previous post, "Wild Boars Don't Jump," (8/15/12), I mentioned that having a place in the Tuscan countryside forces us to become familiar with creatures not on our radar screen as city dwellers. Boars, which ruined our grass on an almost nightly basis, are now kept out by a fence. Our lawn looks better, but that has consequences. The countryside has snakes. Boars eat snakes. If boars are kept out, a snake or two can slither in.

I'm guessing many of you reacted to the last sentence the way any sane person would: a muffled scream, a serious shudder, and an involuntary lifting of your feet. Me too.


We have had our home here for sixteen years, and have been visiting friends nearby for much longer than that, but we have never personally encountered a snake until this year.


I was sitting on the terrace swing, thinking deep summer thoughts like, should I paint my toenails a more vibrant, Italian color?, when Alyssa came screaming up the hill,


"Mom! Mom! There's a snake in the pool!"


I was cool under stress. "Just catch it in the skimmer net and toss it as far as you can down the hill."


She bravely did so. The problem dealt with, we both lost our superficial calm and began to imagine what might have happened. Okay, we aren't talking about a King Cobra here, but you get the picture. She described it as nine inches long, black with yellow markings, and a round head. We googled it. A harmless grass snake. But still.


Ivo, a Tuscan country man who works our property, confirmed our findings. The snake's round head was a clue to its benign nature. However, if we encountered one with an angular head, it was la vipera (a viper), whose bite was poisonous. He nonchalantly added that if bitten, we should tie off the area and go to the pronto soccorso (emergency room).  He drew us pictures of the two types of snake heads.


Seeing the looks of horror on our city faces, he explained that snakes are a part of the countryside and they do not attack. They are more afraid of us than we are of them. They are only dangerous when startled. He said we were in the middle of what was called a "Caligula" heat wave, and there had been no rain for six weeks, which had probably dried up snake water sources. 


After that, we carefully scanned the pool before jumping in. 


The heat wave continued with no sign of rain. Late in August John and I found a small dead snake on the parched ground. It had an angular head. We had been aware of a few human snakes wriggling through John's professional life for a few months and somehow the fate of that poisonous snake seemed like an appealing metaphor.