Saw a snake today, and finally understood a description I read years ago, in the Pentecost books by W. J. Corbett, of a "snake with orange earmuffs." The shade Corbett used may be an exaggeration of the markings, but I love the image - and it's definitely of a grass snake,
like this one. (Once again: yay for Google's image search! It would have taken a lot more work to get that information out of our branch library's somewhat limited reference section.)
I'd been for a walk with my parents and the Storm Goddess, and just as we left the park, we saw the snake heading away from us, across the hot tarmac, in a quick, ripply motion - no idea where it thought it was going, but it didn't seem like a good idea; that area gets used as a car park, and a lot of dogs come through there too. (Funnily enough, on the same walk we'd already seen what we at first took for part of a cast skin. Dad picked it up and looked at it, and then passed it to me, and my first thought was, "Uh, hang on, that's too heavy..." and then when I looked inside one end there were little bones in it. Thanks, father; you give me the nicest presents! It was only a small piece of the total length, and we didn't see the rest of it; we don't know whether it could have been attacked by a predator or if perhaps it had an encounter with the ride-on lawnmower they use in the park. Not a good sign for the live snake, either way.)
It was small, about eight or nine inches long, and it didn't have the black markings down its sides that most of the photos of
Natrix natrix show, but the collar markings were unmistakable. After we all stopped to look at it, it headed straight into our shadows, and then skulked down beside my father's shoe, trying to hide from the sunlight; when he moved, it managed to slip under my sandal, and curled itself up, completely hidden.
It's a long time since I've felt that lucky. It's a little absurb how trusted it made me feel, to know I was standing there with a snake sheltering below the arch of my right foot. So I felt mean when I uncovered it; with its body looking flattened and malleable, as though it could fit through and size or shape of cranny that it cared to. I could see it breathing, a small section of its length expanding and contracting. We didn't want to leave it there, so I tried to slip a book underneath it so I could take it back to the grass, but it just coiled up more tightly; Dad lost patience, picked it up by the tail and carried it back into the park. I hope it found somewhere safe to hide.
This was precisely the kind of day when one ought to have a digital camera. I would have liked a picture of it to show my brothers; can't be helped.