I saved three lives the other day. Actually, I saved one life three times, and had mixed emotions about it.
Returning from a bike ride, I spied a juvenile gopher snake stretched out on the road ahead of me. Though I know snakes have to be coiled to spring, I still swerved a wide arc around it. Then I quickly pedaled up my driveway and ran back down with a wooden garden stake.
My idea was to herd it across the street before it succumbed to the wheels of a passing car. I wouldn't exactly call myself an aficionado of snakes, but I respect them as an essential part of the environment and a sacred creature among all creatures.
Snakes embody our deepest emotions about nature: its mystery, its simultaneous revulsion and allure, and its evocation of the spirit. The Bible, in Genesis, uses a beguiling snake to trick Adam and Eve. The snake entices them into eating from the tree of knowledge. Their innocence is shed when they learn about good and evil. God curses the snake: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your brood and hers. They shall strike at your head, and you shall strike at their heel." Though we tend to focus on the evil of the snake, there is simultaneously something attractive about it that entices Eve.
Similarly, I was sufficiently enticed to return to the snake. We don't get much traffic on our street, but it was early evening and neighbors were coming home from work. I detoured two cars before the snake slithered safely into the neighbor's overgrown ivy. Thus the life saved three times. I admonished it to stay over there, and crossed the street back to my house, having done my duty for nature.
In Biophilia, E.O. Wilson explores our attraction to living things – even scary ones. "What is it exactly that binds us so closely to living things?" asks Wilson. "The urge to affiliate with other forms of life is to some degree innate. It cascades into repetitive patterns of culture across most or all societies, a consistency often noted in the literature of anthropology. Perhaps the most bizarre of the biophilic traits is awe and veneration of the serpent. The mind is primed to react emotionally to the sight of snakes, not just to fear them but to be aroused and absorbed in the details, to weave stories about them."
My husband David arrived home shortly afterwards; I related my own snake story. He asked why I hadn't made an effort to keep the serpent on our side of the street. We struggle perennially with all manner of garden-eating varmints (sacred creatures, all). Trapping gophers only results in opening a niche for the neighboring critters to move into. Battery-operated vibration stakes are like lullabies to voles and moles. Ground squirrels have chewed through our irrigation system so many times that David has taken to filling a large saucer with water in hopes they'll leave the drip line alone.
The root of the problem, in our opinions, is that our full complement of varmint-eating snakes hasn't found its way back since a wildfire in our area. Owls and hawks are active and presumably doing their fair share of dining, but our garden seems nearly bereft of snakes of any kind, at least compared to before the fire.
A year ago I was desperate enough to inquire about purchasing gopher snakes to re-colonize our yard. But a pet store manager informed me it wasn't legal to buy a snake and then free it into the wild, despite the fact that they are native everywhere in North America.
It seems a shame: when they're present, gopher snakes keep the small mammal population in check, all the while performing a decent rattlesnake mimicking act. They are constrictors, but they can hiss and wave their tails like rattlers. Gopher snakes are identifiable by a distinctive dark stripe running from in front of their eye to the angle of their jaw.
Stripe or no stripe, it is a shock to encounter any snake while kneeling to pull a weed in my garden. So I wasn't totally unhappy not to be able to buy our own supply. But if this juvenile was out searching for a place to call his (or her) own home range, I should have welcomed it to our garden. Gopher snake, won't you please return to our side of the street? I promise you a personal escort – again.
Karen Telleen-Lawton serves America's heritage of seniors by providing fee-only financial services. She is Principal of Decisive Path Fee-Only Financial Advisory in Santa Barbara, California (http://www.DecisivePath.com; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ).