Requiem for a Black Snake

A follow-up to "Looking Into an Owl." Amazingly, I had two wrenching roadkill experiences in the same day. Tough stuff. Here's what happened that afternoon. At least I was out of my pajamas for this one:

 I spent too much of today trying to understand the un-understandable. Like why someone in a white van would deliberately run over a beautiful black rat snake on my road, my chapel, my place of communion, when I would have been thrilled just to see one crossing. I knew the minute I saw the snake it was mortally injured.

But I stopped, to see if I could help.

 The poor creature was writhing away, slowly choking up its last meal, which turned out to be probably five meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus). It brought up three, an adult and two babies, but I could see there was at least another vole or two still in there.

It wasn't easy to identify the prey, slimed as it was, but I could see the incisors were yellow, not red, and rodenty in form, so that ruled out the only other like-sized short-tailed mammal it could have been, Blarina brevicaudata, the short-tailed shrew. Nope, it's a meadow vole.

And two babies, which probably wasn't an accident--it had probably surprised a whole family, grabbed the babies and then taken down the mother. The mother came out first, so she was taken last.

Now, any thinking farmer with a hayfield would be more than happy to have a black rat snake cleaning out the voles, but people who run over snakes on purpose don't think that way. Or at all. They don't know or care how the snake fits in the ecosystem; they don't know or care that it is a thing of great grace and beauty; all they know is they hate snakes because they know nothing about them; they fancy the snake is a danger to them, and they kill what they hate.

All without thinking or caring.

On my road. On my watch. And there was nothing I could do but stay with this poor beautiful suffering creature until it was finally still.

Chet Baker would not come closer than five feet. He was concerned for me, but he couldn't make himself draw any nearer. So he investigated the crime scene very thoroughly. Good boy.

 Then he turned for the car, but when he saw that I wasn't moving he came back to offer what solace he could. This is his Deeply Concerned face.

Within minutes the greenbottle flies were there, looking to lay their eggs, perhaps. I can't be sure, but this might be Lucilia sericata.  A beautiful name for a stunning fly.

I am sorry, Snake, but there are so many more thoughtless people than kind ones in this mean old world. I stroked its soft skin but it was already gone, gone to a meadow far away, to bask on a road without meanness or cruelty.

Which should be my road, this road that I love so well, but isn't.