Beware...Vipère
Lurking reptiles
8/20/20263 min read
When I look around me, at the garden and the forest of trees beyond our house, I often think of Hamlet's famous phrase: "There's more in Heaven and Earth, dear Horatio, than you or I have ever dreamed of." The same could be said of our surroundings, particularly right now. Apart from the constant chatter of cicadas, and the odd pesky ants, there is nothing to either see or hear. The birds have retreated from the heat, deep into the forest. Butterflies and wasps are scarcer. Even the bees have vanished. As for the wide variety of insects and reptiles we used to stumble across from time to time, they are nowhere to be seen. I very much hope that it is the heat that has driven them towards the protective shade of the trees, and not climate change that is affecting their numbers. I fear it is a bit of both.
That said, from time to time we receive a pleasant surprise. A reminder that yes, interesting creatures are still out there, somewhere. Like the large female toad that visited us one night, crawling across the gravel garden in the moonlight as we were enjoying the cool air of evening. When she saw our cat sleeping on a rock close by, she froze. Had she only known. Toads are repulsive to sniffing cats. To our delight, we then spotted the tiniest of toads, little more than one cm. long, crawling along at the foot of our fountain... proof that the toad's awkward breeding this spring, wasn't an entire disaster( see my earlier blog)
From time to time , Léo has deposited his prey at our doorstep. In that way, we have learned that there are tiny firecrests hiding in our pine trees. One, we managed to save in time! There have also been harvest mice, voles and even, on one occasion a rat. Perhaps it would have been better not to know about that one.
A couple of days ago B. spotted Léo playing with something. As is his wont, he was teasing a poor creature that was in his grasp; poking it and then tossing it into the air. When he went to see what it was, and whether this creature could be saved, he saw that it was a tiny snake. After shooing away the cat, he spotted its bold markings and realised that it was an adder. In the past we have only ever seen one other (larger) adder, and a couleuvre de Montpellier, a large grass snake. This had a toad in its mouth which it fortunately relinquished. Yes! Thanks to Léo , we now know that there are still snakes lurking out there in the undergrowth.
We know only too well that adders are very poisonous . In our very first summer here, our dog Black got very excited scrabbling in a bush while we were walking in the hills above us. As we were began to descend, he grew weak, and by the time we reached home he was in a state of collapse, so we rushed him to the vet, not knowing what the problem was. The vet immediately diagnosed an adder bite and gave him a 50/50 chance of survival. Blog reader, we learned, very early the next morning that he had survived. For many years after that, we kept some anti adder venom in our fridge! Unfortunately we no longer have any, so for the next few hours we kept Léo under close observation. He is still with us... testimony to the fact that cats are wily creatures. Far more cautious than dogs .
