While walking along our country road, I spotted something off-color in the nearby sagebrush and bunchgrass that drew my attention. As is perpetually my habit, I drifted over for a closer inspection.
Well,
you don’t see that every day.
At
the base of a sandy anthill, I found the skeleton of a snake, likely a
bullsnake, its countless vertebrae and ribs laid out like cursive writing that
had been hacked to pieces.
A
macabre end for a life that most other critters, many humans included, don’t
appreciate. Snakes live a tough life. For one thing, fear of snakes is nearly
universal. Also, consider how they are forever wed to gravity, with neither
wings nor legs to free them for even an instant. And here in Montana, they must
hide away for half the year in hibernation.
I
could not even begin to guess what events delivered the snake to this end.
I
suppose my neighbor Kevin and I are odd in preferring to have bullsnakes
around. They do a lot to keep the mouse population in check. Just the other
day, he called me to tell me he'd spotted a five-footer at the lakeshore.
"We'll need to tell everyone they may see it and they need to leave it
alone," I cautioned.
In
our way of thinking, a dead bullsnake is of no value.
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—Mitchell
Hegman
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