A snake on the prowl

Today we met Yvonne, a neighbor who likes to garden. It is because of Yvonne that the area around our condo is festooned with flowers of every hue and color. It makes our close area look more tropical than some of the other places on Siesta Key.



Yvonne is about 70 and speaks with a heavy French accent. She gives us little clues about things like how to get the mail, where to find various keys that we will need, and who calls the shots in the condo association.



We speak to her for about an hour before we bid her good day. But as we’re leaving she calls us back and tells us in her broken English that, if we come across black snakes while we’re walking about the place “They are good. They eat insects and don’t bother us while we’re gardening.”



I had suspected as such and filed this information away in the “Duh” category. But then Yvonne continued, “But if you come across brown snakes they are not so good. See, like that one resting on my steps now.”



We looked at her steps, some 10 feet from us, and saw a brown snake about 4 feet long and the diameter of a 25-cent piece sunning on her steps. “They can make trouble,” she said, as she picked up a stick and poked at it. I noticed that Yvonne was wearing sandals and suddenly the word “brave” came into my mind.



As her stick poked the snake, it crawled slowly and with deliberation off the steps and into the nearby bushes.



“Anything with designs on its skin is no good,” she said. I felt like our experience in the condo had been inexorably changed and wondered if I could ever again walk about the place without checking first for 40-foot long brown snakes with designs on their backs.