A funny thing happened on the way to the shops...

A funny thing happened on the way to the shops... As you can probably guess from the image above, my day took a bit of an unexpected turn. I was walking along a main road when I spotted this, moving along. It was right in the middle of the pavement by the end of a drive. One pedestrian, one cyclist on the pavement, or a car pulling in or out of the drive and it would have been squashed very quickly. One of Britain's rare reptiles, a slow worm, is not normal sight around here any more (in a nod to local politics, the council are determined to build all over their habitat). I tried to pick it up to put it in the grass, but it coiled up the second my shadow fell on it, and I didn't want to risk hurting it trying to lift it anyway or making it shed its tail (yes, they do that)l. This was admittedly very poor performance from someone who was handling adders before age 12 – I know handling snakes is not advised, but the cat kept bringing in his prizes, and snakes do much better in the hedgerow than in the cat. So what was there to do? I waited. The snake took nearly fifteen minutes to cover the three feet to the verge, where it eventually vanished. The snake was fascinating but, I have to say, so were people's reactions. There weren't that many passing by. A few would have stepped on it, but moved out to give me space they wouldn't give the snake. Several did not notice anything amiss – even though there was a mad woman standing watching something on the ground... One looked where I was looking and said the understandable “Oh my god, is that a snake?” and calmed down once I pointed out it was harmless. One saw it, reacted badly, and only calmed down when the words endangered, protected, and the fact it didn't bite were mentioned. Apparently where she was from, they don't have non-poisonous snakes. One gave me a very odd look indeed, then saw the snake and rushed on. No one stopped to help. For me, I got a good set of photos, and the snake got to a safe home. The amusing addendum was that in the supermarket I found myself standing in a queue behind one of the people who walked by. She didn’t recognise me, hunched over her phone chatting as she had been when she walked passed, and she was complaining to her friend that her life was boring and she never saw anything out of the ordinary. I wonder why? (Click for larger images and use back to come back to the blog.) Read more. This blog has moved to http://www.rablogs.co.uk/tirial where the original articles can be found.