The Little Green Snake

So, it was a warm spring day in the early 70s when I was about 5 years old – before I was in school. My little brother and I would go into the large backyard and sit under the huge tree on the hill to watch the school buses bring the older kids home in the afternoons.

Finally, the long yellow school bus came and released the noisy older kids as we watched. I was sitting Indian style and my brother was standing next to me. We had on t-shirts and shorts and we were barefoot, as usual. He jumped, like he was skipping rope and I looked down to see a little green grass snake coming my way. I jumped up and screamed SNAKE!! while my brother took off towards the house yelling his fool head off. I was several paces behind him, yelling my fool head off. I remember dashing thru the glass sliding door and into the kitchen, where my mom had her head in the sink washing or rinsing or something. I remember that she grabbed a towel and wrapped her hair up just as it was: half washed or half rinsed.

Much excitement ensued as my mom and a neighborhood mom got their hoes and began to scour the yard for the offending reptile. I’m giggling as I write this, with the memory of us scurrying about and our turbaned mom stalking with her hoe, determined to kill that teensy little snake.

It was a silly little Rough Green Snake like this:

Heh, I guess with all the ruckus we raised the moms assumed it was a 10′ python or something!

Well, fortunately for the little green snake, the moms didn’t find it and it got to live its snakey life in one piece.

For us, I suppose we went off to do whatever kids do on a gorgeous spring day. The snake incident gone from our heads as we moved on to our next kid drama.

I recalled that incident years later and have giggled each and every time I’ve remember it since. In my mind, it’s in sharp spring colors of grass green, robins egg blue sky, deep yellow bus, noisy kids, the tree reaching into the clouds, the teensy snake that was granny smith apple green… It’s too bad that my writing skills aren’t good enough to convey what I see in my thoughts. My hope is that if I do this long enough, perhaps my skills will begin to come close to my memories.