Snake Stories for Valentine's Day

This morning, Sunday, February 14th, 20212 when I awoke, I was thinking of food storage to last through the long frozen winters of the northern lands, not that we arent' experiencing a frozen winter ourselves at this time. But I was thinking of the past. Lately I have watched a series called The Last Kingdom, about the English hero, King Alred, who stopped the Danish Viking invasion of what would become England. It is a mostly historically correct film version of a series of books by Bernard Cornwall about the Anglo Saxons. It made me think of food storage to last through the frozen months: nuts, grains, dried berries, root vegetables like potatoes and carrots, apples. And that made me think of the little spoilers, mice and rats! Not only our competitors for food but, as we know now, the carriers of the lethal fleas that brought pestilence. That made me think of snakes and a winter's evening when I sat with some fellow folunteers in the kitchen of historic Whitall House at Red Bank Battlefield enjoying the dinner prepared by the hearth cooks, Terry and Eleanor. From uner the wood pile came a huge black snake. When I brought it to the attention of the others, our Head Historian and curator, Meghan Giordano said, "Oh don't worry about her, she lives here!." She told us the name she had given to the snake but I have forgotten it now. It was a black "Rat Snake" a non poisonous hunter of mice and rats, and, I would presume a helpful household guest to those with a dirt storage cellar in Colonial Days as the snake would eat the mice and rats but not the grain or vegetables. I have three snake stories. One day my mother was driving her old white Dodge Mirada downtown in Petersburg, West Virginia where my parents had moved after retirement. She saw a snake coue out from under the dashboard. She went to the local gas station and told the mechanic, but his search revealed nothing, so my mother went on her way. This happened several times, always when my mother was alone in the car. Soon people began to doubt her. My mother and father drove up and down the 7 hour ride from West Virginia to New Jersey half a dozen times a year and my father never saw the snake. Then one day when the family was gathered from New Jersey and five or six of us were squeezed into the car to go grocery shopping. My father put the groceries in the trunk and when we got home, we all got out of the car and my father liften the trunk lid and there was a huge black snake slithering around the bags! "Get into the house!" My father hollered and we all ran to the guest room where there was a window overlooking the car in the drive. We watched as my father carefully lifted the snake up with a grden rake and lofted it into the trees next to the house. We came back out to get the groceries an my father lifted the floor board of the trunk and underneath was a vast graveyard of mouse bones from the years the snake had made its home in the underworld of the Dodge Mirada! My own snake story is also set in West Virginia. On a hike in the Dolly Sods, a Tundra region of the mountains not too far from where my parents lived, I decided to sit on a rocky outcropping over a spectacular view so I could do some yoga and stretch from the difficult uphill hiking. My companion at the time, went off to roam around the nearby area. After about 15 minutes of yoga stretches, I did a sitting meditation, then reached over the edge of the outcropping to pull myself up. Right beneath me, by a couple of feet was another rocky shelf and on it sat a huge rattlesnake, calmly gazing at me. I could count the rattles on its tail, there were nine, but it wasn't shaking it in warning, just sitting there sunning itself and perhaps doing its own meditation. I slowly and quietly got up, took a photo of the snake, then left in peace and wonderment. These snake stories are about peace and friendship among species, the kind of hope and trust we all rely on that if we are peaceful, so will be those whom we encounter. It isn't always true, of course, but here are three stories of a kind of love where we were all peaceful and friendly. Happy Valentine's Day. Jo Ann Wright wrightj45@yahoo.com