A Christmas Snake

It was unseasonably warm today, even for here. I think it was in the upper 60s, and mostly sunny. It was so warm in fact that one of the numerous grass snakes around here must have decided it was springtime. I know this because as I was taking the kids outside to go over to the JCC to play basketball, Ulysses trotted up onto the porch with the snake in his mouth.

He dropped it, and since I could see it was still alive, I herded Ulysses into the house and hoped the snake wasn't hurt too badly. When we got home from the JCC a couple hours later, the snake was gone. So I said, "Oh good, it looks like the snake got away."

"Or maybe," Ben said, voicing my unspoken thought with uncanny accuracy, "it just went away to die somewhere else."