The Visit of the Snow Snake

It is February, still bitter cold in a month that should have winter’s hands easing their icy grip around our necks. It is the month, when the sun has the strength to melt back the snow from any dark surface even when the temperatures are fairly low. The ground hog may or may not see his shadow, but here in Maine, that really doesn’t matter. An early spring is actually sometime in April.
There are days, however, when the sun gives promise of spring, and I am reminded of a family mystery of many years gone by: the visit of the snow snake.
My grandfather had shoveled a February snow all the way back to the road, which by that time, had been touched with the civilizing effect of blacktop. There on the warm tar was a snake, wriggling like a sluggish drunkard. Although he was fascinated by them, my grandfather was loathe to touch them. In fact, the only time he moved them was with a stick or an axe handle. With the corner of his shovel, the old man lifted the snake and flipped it into the snow, where it promptly stiffened out. He then scraped it back onto the warm tar where it re-commenced its writhing. This scenario was played back and forth until the two neighbors, Leland Williams and “Snipe” Purington came by to see what the commotion was. After a chorus of “by the Jesuses;” “Never did see the likes;” and “Now, ain’t that somethin’s,” the poor reptile was thrown up on the snow bank to become a chewy treat for a mid-winter starved fox.
Where that snake came from, no one would even speculate. It remains to this day in the category of events we Mainers would label, “Now, ain’t that odd.”