Will work for food

Nadia and I were dragging our feet returning home from a walk along the stony beach of Boblo Island. The boys ran ahead with my friend Mary, and I fell even further behind than my daughter, as I scanned the ground for the perfect letter-shaped stones to spell a message to our island neighbors.

I heard Nadia yell for her brother, but he was too far ahead to hear her over the hum of the waves. I ran up to her, but before I could say anything, she put her finger on her mouth: "ssshh.... snake!..."

No, it wasn't the one pictured above. That's a rattlesnake. Yes, they have them on Boblo. But for this experience, I was again caught without my camera. Nadia and I gave up trying to call the boys back, and gave our full attention to the snake. He was probably a common garter snake, with a beautiful, velvety black on its back, and two yellow stripes along the sides. His head and neck were about the size of my thumb, and bright orangey-yellow. He was less than two feet long.

We watched as he deliberately made his way up the stony beach. He swayed his head side to side, and every so often flickered his tongue, using his unique snake organs to sense some prey that we knew from his behavior had to be there. We looked around, but couldn't see anything obvious. We saw a few small hollows in the ground that we thought might have harbored some insects, but the snake slithered right over them, and continued doggedly on his way. In twenty minutes, he traversed about seven feet of beach, sensing his way with patience, and assurance. He did not seem bothered by our presence.

When he crested the ridge of rocks, there was a small mossy area, and Nadia observed that some of the moss was slightly disturbed in a couple of spots. The snake made his way to this opening, and plunged his head under the moss. We held our breaths. The snake emerged.

"Froggy!" yelled Nadia, hid her head in my shirt, and burst into tears.
"Sweetie, you knew he was hunting!"
"But I thought it was going to be an insect"
"Oh, honey, you don't have to watch this if you don't want to, but the snake has to eat"

In the end, she elected to run and join the boys. I determined to see the spectacle through to the end. I squatted in an awkward position on the stony bank, and watched, transfixed, a scene that I had only read about in books. The snake's head, as I said, was roughly the size of my thumb. The frog, or toad, most likely, was the size of a small chicken egg. The snake clasped its head in his jaws, as it pulled it out of the burrow. Though the frog twitched somewhat, it put up surprisingly little struggle. I don't know if this particular type of snake used any kind of venom, or if the prey simply asphyxiated.

I expected I don't know what. That the snake's jaws would open like the gates of hell, and swallow the toad in one giant gulp? In fact, the bulk of the toad passed through the snake's gullet extremely slowly, and the effort the predator had to make to earn his meal was palpable. He paused frequently, uncoiled and contracted his body drawing the meal in very gradually. It did not pass through the snake's body as a big, round lump, but rather was formed into an elongated thickening as the snake worked to engulf it. There was also surprisingly little gore. However, there was an element of the macabre, as the snake finished drawing in the body of the toad, and rested a spell with the grotesque handlebar mustache of frog legs sticking out of its mouth.

Although the snake was the predator, it occurred to me how extremely vulnerable he was at a moment like this. Whatever ability he had to move with a large prey slipping slowly though his throat was further impeded by the prey's large limbs getting in the way of escape from a potential larger predator.

I further wondered whether, if such a predator came along, would it be getting two meals for the price of one. The toad, after all, was still very much in evidence as a separate entity. When would the prey cease to have an identity of its own, and become fully a part of the snake?

Comments

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