The June-pictures and
Cottage-Life threads
intersect in a photograph of a stiffly-serpentine beast that appeared on our
beach. With a true story about a real serpent.

OK, I confess to finding and placing the little stone representing the
critter’s eye.

Boys and Beasts

One time last summer, our son invited a friend over for a day of
Cottage Life. They vanished into the woods, as is entirely proper for
children of that age. I was under the cottage considering a recalcitrant
water heater when I heard their voices, shrilly excited, approaching rapidly.
Then Lauren’s, cool but firm: “That’s nice; now take it outside,
boys.”

A few minutes later, a frightened shriek from not too far away, and the
boys’ chatter returning to the cottage, faster this time. My son saying in a
practical tone of voice: “If it was poisonous, you’ll die in about an
hour.”

It seems they’d caught some poor little garter snake and, after showing it
off to Lauren, his friend
did something that provoked it to turn around and bite
him — well, gum him, they have no teeth to speak of — hard enough to make
him let go. His skin wasn’t even broken, and once they realized our
sympathies were with the snake, the boys went back to the woods.