BY HARRY WEEKES
It’s already been a pretty snake-y kind of year. First, there were the rattlers out Quigley. I didn’t even go to the hibernaculum on the trail where they were, I just heard about them.
One of the places I heard about the “snake nest” was the back patio of The Sage School Barn where people pointed in the general direction, usually with an accompanying shiver.
It was in this very same spot that, while eating lunch, a racer (a North American racer, to be exact) slipped through the grass in front of me. As always, getting this close to a snake inevitably invokes the “one snake a year” clause in my personal contract with the natural world. This is to say, I work to catch one snake each year.
So, I stood to go about apprehending the racer and immediately learned they are aptly named. In the words of my students, “The snake booked it.”
Quite wonderfully, I sat in the same place two days later when racer #2 showed up. For results of attempted nabbing, please see above sentence. This smaller snake shot into a pile of rocks and disappeared before I even got my bearings.
For most people, a comfort with animals tips into discomfort based on number, with the exact number being a personal thing. One snake, not much of a problem. Two? OK. You have my attention. What about 15? Now, you’re freaking out.
You can insert almost any animal into this equation. How many spiders do you need to start feeling the willies? What about crickets? I even like to turn this around with questions like, “What number of porcupines would make you feel uncomfortable?” “What about house cats?”
For snakes, though, the freak-out number hovers very close to one, with even the accumulation of singleton sightings adding up to an ominous vibe. Part of my annual snake-catching goal is to provide an antidote to this, and a desire to see each snake with excitement rather than dread.
This is why, on the warm days, as we come up our driveway, I say, “Get your snake eyes out” to any passengers in my car. This is why I come to a stop and leap into the road when we come across one of our little reptile friends slithering from one side to the other. This is why I gently slid my pen under a snake on Picabo Road in the middle of June and recorded this year’s “first snake” – a beautiful little Western terrestrial garter snake.
Ever alert with his unblinking eyes, the snake paid me a lot less attention than I would think, considering our size difference and the fact that I immediately picked him up off the ground. He moved easily from my hand to my arm with the usual undulations, and I could feel his tiny scales catching my skin.
I held him for less than a minute before returning him to the dirt, where I nudged him into sliding off the road into the grass, not wanting him to get run over. I assumed he was a him based on his size (the males being smaller), and parted with a “Thanks, Buddy”—my appreciation for the encounter.
As I drove off, everything appeared a bit more vivid, which highlighted another blessing of the snake rule—the power of the chance encounter. Snake sightings are one of those things that happen unexpectedly. To move immediately from a world that slips easily into a background blur to one that is intense and alive, simply by trying to catch a wild animal? It’s a nice gift from a small reptile.
Harry Weekes is the founder and head of school at The Sage School in Hailey. This is his 54th year in the Wood River Valley, where he lives with Hilary and their two mini-Dachshunds. The baby members of their flock have now become adults; Georgia and Simon are fledging in North Carolina, and Penelope has recently changed roosting sites to Connecticut.
