Bog Myrtle & Peat

Home, Parish of Kirkgunzeon – 25/4/20

A snake in the hayshed hunting, and the warm walls around him. This is no idle sunlounger, spooled out on a tump of grass to recharge and consider – here is the man at work – fifteen inches of silver and black chequering, and lips like a grinning skull. Perhaps he lay still in the morning to warm and be ready, but now he is charged and the fumes of his engine run clear and quiet. He crosses a square of daylight, but the tank is full and he has all the heat he needs.

He’s come to this shed on the offchance of a mouse, and I step back to see him go, quartering and sliding like a long-pulled chain. Into the haystack and round its back, coiling and pausing with his black tongue dipped with excitement. He covers ground like a spaniel, pausing now and then to ponder the scents on this black floor where the old bales have lain.

Here is a moment of madly small intensity. Pity the mouse who doesn’t see him coming, because who would choose to come nose to nose with a devil like this? I shrink myself to a vole’s eye view and find his head is bigger than mine – his body far thicker than I can hug or hold back. I know that his movements are driven by a muscular wave in his belly, but that knowledge does not help me. I challenge you to watch a snake move and tell me that a scientific explanation adds anything to the ghoulish magic of it.

Failing to find live game, he moves far to the back of the barn to bide his time. Perhaps he will spring an ambush in the dusty evening when the swallows come in around the rafters and some rat rises to mooch among the twine. Whatever he does next, I will not see it – I have already seen more than enough.