Have respect for our slithery creatures

THERE have been few sightings of snakes in my garden over the summer months but now that Autumn is here there have been three slithery visitors in the past week.

Others have left their calling cards of shed skin in various parts of the garden and one skin, of “eeek”quality, was found in the house, languidly posed among the cushions on the sofa in a little-used sitting room. That disconcerting event put an abrupt stop to the habit of walking around the house at night barefoot in the dark.

Another, a red-lipped Herald, had made himself comfortable under the spoilt dog’s cushions on the front stoep. This one was anticipated because it was the same cool place where a hatching of tiny frogs took up residence;14 of them at one counting. Each day the frogs grew. The bigger they became the fewer there were snuggled under Ruff’s fleece bedding. Perhaps they had grown up and hopped it for safer climes or they became tasty fast food, sitting ducks really, for the aggressive assassin, the red-lipped Herald. The snake was gently removed in a dish towel and relocated to a far corner of the garden where, it is hoped, he will remain.

The second was seen by the weekend gardener. It had mouth agape and a very fat belly and was lying on the lawn. The gardener described it as white underneath and brown on top. Not much to go on and too vague to hazard a guess of the species, but from the sound of it, he had recently enjoyed a meal; a frog probably. He was also relocated to that far-flung corner of the garden where, it is hoped, he will stay.

A few days later there was a DH Lawrence moment when, daydreaming at the window overlooking my garden, I noticed some green leaves on the rim of the birdbath. Then the “leaves” moved. Over the lip came a sharp head and then a long spotted body that hung, suspended for a moment, as the snake located some reeds and slid gracefully from sight.

It called to mind the poem, Snake, and I marvelled at how a few well chosen words could capture so precisely the movement of the snake at a water-trough in Sicily.

“He reached down from the fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom and trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough and rested his throat upon the stone bottom, and where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness he sipped with his straight mouth, softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack, long body,” I love that description.

While the number of frogs and snakes in my garden has me donning sturdy gumboots and watching my footing when ferreting in long grass or abundant groundcover, I am grateful for these often- loathed creatures.

Grateful to the frogs, for all their noise, which keep the mosquitoes and other small annoyances in check, and grateful to the snakes which control the frogs and, more importantly, the geckos. An explosion of geckos which results in the spattering of furniture with gecko droppings is really quite disgusting.

Let’s have some respect for our resident reptiles. Give them a wide berth if needs be, but please don’t kill them.

I am not asking readers to pen poetry a la DH Lawrence, but to appreciate that all creatures and their habitats have a role to play. Remove one and nature becomes unbalanced.

It is because of our belief as human beings that we have the right to order the environment for our own comfort, that we think we also have the right to kill and maim or urban creatures, snakes, frogs, monkeys and others.

Let them be. Please.