S Is For Sensual, And Snake

The letter S is the most sensual of the alphabet.  First, there is that small descending curve:  sen-, then the big downward swoop and that little flick at the end:  -sual.

In my mind's eye, S is always a rich golden yellow.

The plant world abounds in S's--ferns unfurling, leaves curling, tendrils twining.  Our most basic ideas of beauty are entangled with the S shape, from the capitols of ionic columns, to cabriole legs, to the whiplash curves of Art Nouveau.

What makes a swan more beautiful than a duck?  That S-shaped neck. Horses are full of S's:  the line that begins at the top of the arched neck, goes through the shoulders and ends at the bottom of the rib cage;  the line that starts at the belly, goes through the loins and over the croup;  the tail.  The ideal female body is also a collection of S curves, even if in contemporary Western culture those curves more and more approximate a straight line.

Snakes, which mimic the letter S with their bodies, possess a number of other S qualities:  they are sinuous, sibilant, secretive.  They are also serene, having 100%  sang froid.  Except for vipers, they are solitary, and the ones that haunt our gardens are salutary, preying on pests from slugs to (small) moles.

Looked at objectively, snakes are beautiful, so it's unfortunate that they get such bad press.  Sure, some snakes can kill you, but most neither can nor want to.  I believe that because snakes look so sensual our culture has cast these graceful creatures as evil (see the book of Genesis).  But not all peoples have reviled the snake.  From the charming little statues that have come down to us, it looks like the snake priestesses of ancient Crete regarded live snakes both as semi-divine pets and as wardrobe accessories. 

Snake At My Back Door

Two steps made of thick slabs of West Pawlet slate, flanked by overgrown bushes of ornamental sage, lead to our backyard. I'd been smelling a lot of sage on Wolfie lately, and noticing that the bushes were looking trampled.

Yesterday I watched him snuffing in those bushes, then rearing back as though zapped by something, then snuffing again. I looked closely and there she was, brown and dry and curled up loosely upon herself--the snake. She was just under an inch in girth, and she resented the dog for interfering with her sunbathing.

I guess our back stoop is a perfect snake habitat: two slabs of south-facing slate, and a tub garden within easy reach.

I'm assuming that this is a black snake, harmless to humans and pets. I'm hoping that, come fall, she will stem the waves of field mice immigrating into our basement. My only concern is that she will eat the toads that are precious to my garden. Otherwise, I'm glad to give her a home.

“I will put enmity between thee and the woman,” Jehovah said to the snake as Paradise disintegrated. Well, here is one woman (me) who doesn't feel a particular enmity toward the snake tribe. Why should I? I've never been stung by a viper, nor strangled by a python. The snakes I have met have peered at me with their clever little eyes, shown me their curious forked tongues, and slithered away discreetly.

For eons before anybody wrote about Jehovah, the snake was sacred to the Goddess. Remember those Cretan statuettes in their flamenco skirts and amazing decolletages, holding snakes in their hands? They don't look to me like they're struggling with the snakes, or fighting with them. They're having a good time, and so are the snakes. And then the patriarchy came on the scene, and messed things up.

The Virgin Mary is often depicted with her foot on the head of a snake, who is holding an apple in her mouth. But is that really enmity? If Mary's foot were really crushing her skull, wouldn't the snake be struggling, looking wounded, or curling up the Virgin's leg? Would she still be hanging on to the apple?

If the Virgin Mary is who I think She is, Her foot is delivering a friendly pat, the snake is relaxed, and the apple from the Tree Of Knowledge is full of vitamins.

As for the snake in my back stoop, she's welcome to stay, and I hope the winter is kind to her.

The Snake, The Egg, And I

My chicken coop is a haven of peace and contentment, and gathering eggs is my favorite job. The sun streams through the dusty window, a couple of hens walk around debating what to do next—scratch some litter, lay an egg? Chatting to them in a friendly tone, I reach into the nests, retrieve the morning's harvest and place it in my basket.

But one day I walked into the coop and found, sitting on a clutch of rosy-brown eggs, not a hen, but a snake. This was no pencil-thin garter snake, but a full-grown black snake, sleek and shiny and as big around as a pitchfork handle. She was draped over the clutch like a skein, and she had an egg in her mouth. To get the egg into her mouth she had had to dislocate her jaw (snakes are able to do this when they want to eat something really big), and there she sat, her tiny head barely visible around the huge egg, staring at me and trying hard to swallow.

I am not particularly brave, but when I saw that snake helping herself to my eggs, I was outraged. I ran to the kitchen and grabbed the spaghetti tongs. Back in the coop I grasped the snake behind her head with the tongs and pried the egg from her jaws with my other hand. Then I carried her to the woods behind the coop, where she disappeared without a sound. I took the eggs to the house, put them in the fridge, and trembled a little.

Next morning, the snake was back on the nest.

This time she had managed to swallow an egg, and I could see its shape just behind her head, starting its slow descent down her body. The nerve! I exclaimed. I didn't run for the tongs, but grabbed the snake with my bare hand and took off for the woods. I put her down firmly and told her not to come back.

But she did, and when I found her on the nest again I took hold of her and hurled her as hard as I could into the woods. And that time she stayed away.

A day later, the mice arrived. At first there was only one, an adorable little field mouse straight out of Beatrix Potter, all ears and shiny eyes, watching me as I refilled the hens' feeder. The next day there were two, scurrying along the top of a hay bale. The third day—I could smell them as soon as I entered the coop--there were mice everywhere, running on the windowsill, scrabbling on the floor, leaving droppings on everything.


What, I wondered, was behind this plague? It took me a while to put two and two together, but I eventually figured out that the mice had moved in because the snake had moved out. In my ignorance, I had chased away the heaven-sent, poison-free, ecologically sound solution to my mouse problem, and the mice knew it.

Too late I repented my callous treatment of my friend, the black snake. She stayed away a long time, and during that period I fought the mice with traps and poison and verbal abuse, and lost.

But next spring the dog found a dried-out snake skin of impressive length under a bush. A couple of days later, the mice took off. And once again I found the snake in the nest, looking groomed and shiny in her brand-new skin.

This time I welcomed her. So what if some mornings she's draped over the eggs like a broody hen? I chat to her softly and she lets me push aside her coils, occasionally darting her tongue at me, the way a hen will make pecking motions when you get the eggs out from under her.

The snake and I have made peace with each other, and she makes herself at home in my corner of paradise. And isn't that what the real Paradise was all about--creatures living in harmony with each other, and humans knowing enough to let Nature take her course?