Snakes (a)cross the road #phenology

We had to go into "The Cities" this morning on some financial business. The temperature was somewhere between mid-50's and low 60's. Two egrets were working the shallows of the Sunrise River pools near County Highway 36. After we finished our business, we met up with the Better Half at one of our favorite hangouts, Nina's Coffee Cafe. The BH had a work meeting that wrapped up about the same time as our financial meeting and we hadn't had coffee together for some time. Nina's still has some of the eclectic ambiance we used to really like, but it's picked up a hipsterish veneer that tamp's down a feeling of comfort we used to get. It's still one of the better coffee houses in St. Paul, but feels a little less user friendly to this aging hippie.

gopher snake sunning on gravel road

Photo by J. Harrington

Driving home, the temperatures had climbed into the mid-70's and the sun-warmed asphalt induced one large bull snake/gopher snake to warm itself in the middle of the west-bound lane. We fully, and regretfully, expect to see what's left of the corpse in the next day or so when we drive back that way. Later, much closer to home, while walking the dogs today we noticed the small, stiffening body of a redbelly snake near the edge of our gravel road. We strongly suspect it was "sunning" itself and the driver may well never have noticed it as the tires passed on the snake. We had always thought it was only in Springtime that reptiles warmed themselves on roadways. Clearly, that judgment was in error, although the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources mentions only one of the snakes in Snakes and Lizards of Minnesota as sunning itself both Spring and Fall. We bet that's simply an editorial decision and not a substantive difference among snakes. We also suspect that the snakes we've recently seen were not simply headed to their hibernacula although, again, that judgment could well be in error, it seems early for Winter preparations, especially since MNDNR writes that our snakes are active through October [p 3].

It looks like rain clouds are piling up. We're going to shorten this posting so we can go look for sunning snakes or wooly bear caterpillars before it starts to pour. Wish us luck.

Shaking the Grass

Janice N. Harrington

Evening, and all my ghosts come back to me
like red banty hens to catalpa limbs
and chicken-wired hutches, clucking, clucking,
and falling, at last, into their head-under-wing sleep.

I think about the field of grass I lay in once,
between Omaha and Lincoln.  It was summer, I think.
The air smelled green, and wands of windy green, a-sway,
a-sway, swayed over me.  I lay on green sod
like a prairie snake letting the sun warm me.

What does a girl think about alone
in a field of grass, beneath a sky as bright
as an Easter dress, beneath a green wind?

Maybe I have not shaken the grass.
All is vanity.

Maybe I never rose from that green field.
All is vanity.

Maybe I did no more than swallow deep, deep breaths
and spill them out into story:  all is vanity.

Maybe I listened to the wind sighing and shivered,
spinning, awhirl amidst the bluestem
and green lashes:  O my beloved!  O my beloved!

I lay in a field of grass once, and then went on.
Even the hollow my body made is gone.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.