elanya

So, I went for a walk this afternoon, in quest of Easter candy. Target was closed, HEB was closed... but the ice cream store and Kroger were both open, so hooray!

I was returning Krogerwards from the ice cream place (marble slab creamery, with swirled cinnamon and raspberry ice creams with almond slivers mixed in), passing along the little path that leads from behind Target to Claire's street. There were three teenagers coming towards me with a slightly-smaller-than-Jola sized dog (possibly a puppy, couldn't tell). I was jamming to some Sisters of mercy, so smile and nodded, let the dog sniff my fingers as I slipped by, and continued on my way. Barely two steps past them, one of the girls screams bloody murder. Confused, I turn back, and see the dog standing on the sidewalk abandoned by the girls, next to the guy. The girls had instantaneously transported themselves to the far side of the path and are cowering against each other, staring back along the path. I do a double take and give the guy a confused look.... The dog wanders over to join its mistress. Wanting to make sure nothing really terrible has happened, I turn back.

"Careful," the guys says, "there's a snake."

Internally, I roll my eyes. With my outside voice, I ask "where?"

He points to a sinuous black creature with thin lighter bands or stripes, snuggled in to the grass along the path... which, incidentally runs along side a drainage creek. Also, it hella rained this morning. Clearly this is some kind of watersnake, and it is clearly a black and banded type of snake, and that's about all i can remember of descriptions of cottonmouth, so I keep a respectful distance.

"What kind of snake?" I ask the guy - I have no idea I thought he might know any better than me, really, but you never know. He peers at it (as do I. okay, maybe this is when I actually notice the banding and decide to keep my distance ;p).

"It's a cottonmouth," he pronounces. "But it won't hurt you. They like the water*."

Well, okay, kid, I think to myself. Cottonmouths are actually supposed to be fairly aggressive, but whatever... External voice: "Cool."

I carry on my merry way. Googling doesn't help me confirm the snake's identity, because the pictures of snakes of various species have a fair range of variation. Maybe it 8was* a cotton mouth. It also looked fairly similar to this snake, which is apparently a blotched water snake 'in its dark phase,' about which I could find no other information :p Or maybe a yellow bellied water snake or a crossbreed of the two? Apparently the way to tell the difference is through their heads, but I didn't know so didn't pay close enough attention.

Anyway, what really gets me, other than the coolness of the snake itself, whatever it may have been, was the speed at which the other girls vamoosed to the other end of the path..... and also how they left behind the dog!


*Or something else similarly true yet fairly inane that I already knew ;)