The Snake of Consideration

So yesterday morning, I'm out in my back yard being a good home-owner and busting my ass on some yard work when I look down and notice a slithering in the as yet uncut grass. I kneel down and spot an itty-bitty reddish colored snake meandering between the blades of green. About six inches long with a head no bigger than a blackeyed pea, the little guy wasn't afraid to snap at my gloved hand when I put it out in front of him. With a bit of effort I managed to pick him up and carried him out front where my brother in law identified him as a corn snake. This behaviour, by the way, would completely horrify my mother, who believes that the only good snake is a dead snake.

I set the little snake down in the grass and went back to work. While I was working, it occurred to me that even though I had found him in the back yard, I had released him in the front. I tried to imagine how he (or she, I didn't look to see its sex and even if I had I wouldn't have known what I was looking at) might feel about being removed from his or her previous location and just dropped into a brand new one with no say in the matter. The equivalent for me would be like getting yanked up and moved to another city, or at least to the other side of town. No warning, no foreshadowing, the roof just opens up and a big hand comes out of the sky and carries me a few giant steps across the globe and plunks me down in some strange new land. And I thought for a second that this would really kinda suck. But then I wondered, would it really? Necessarily? It would certainly cause some level of inconvenience, but perhaps it could be a good thing. A sudden injection of change in one's life. Of course, such hand out of the sky occurrences do happen to some people via job transfers by huge uncaring corporations or deployments by huge uncaring militaries, but it's not like I was sending this snake off to war.

In the end, I decided that my little snake friend probably needed a change of scenery, and besides, I didn't want him to get cut up by the lawn mower, so I left him out front. I hope that he doesn't hold it against me.