Fiction: A Field Guide to Snakes of New York

By Jim Wright

I am wary of snakes. They surprise me, dashing by in the grass like mysterious brushstrokes. They look at me with bright, unblinking eyes, as if the universe itself were sizing me up.Whenever I stumble on a snake, it feels like a fated encounter. Iwonder—if I were to gather snake sightings from my memory and deal them out like tarot cards, what story would they tell?

1. Rat Snake.

My first snake memory is blurred. I was about five, running through the new grass of a hayfield on a fine June day. I hadbeen suckered by a kildeer that fled dragging a fake broken wing to draw me away from its hidden nest. Suddenly a long, long black snake shot in a diagonal across my path. I felt an electric current of fright that folded me into a convulsive leap. I howledin terror, turned, and bounded for home, sobbing and chuffing like a train.

2. Northern Water Snake. 

It was a muggy August day with storm clouds gradually stacking up dark in the west. I gripped my plastic bucket andfollowed my oldest siblings, Liz the boss, Sarah the fierce, and Rob, my gentle, compliant brother, across the hay field toward a band of dark-green shade marking the woods and the edge of our farm. I stayed at the rear, doggedly maintaining my distance. I knew that if I crowded tall, skinny Sarah by stepping into her trigger space, she might paralyze my arm with a sudden shoulder punch. 

As we crossed from sunlight into the woods, my vision danced with floating afterimages. We splashed across the creek, climbed a treed slope to the further boundary of the woodlot and came out again blinking into full daylight. Before us was the prize: stands of blackberry bushes high as a man, smelling fragrant like tea leaves, drooping with fruit, and trailing thorny tendrils that could tear a hole in your pants. 

We split up to pick berries. I worked methodically, trying to minimize thorn scrapes as I reached into the center of the bushes. Soon my bucket held a growing mound of berries andmy arms were rashed with flecks of blood. 

I turned at the sound of a swishing bush. A lady maybe my mom’s age stood there flushed in the heat, straw hat tilted back, carrying a wicker basket. She was dressed in cotton slacks, sneakers, and a white blouse, and wore the reddest lipstick I had ever seen.

“Hello,” she said. Her eyes looked angry. “What do you have in the bucket?” 

I tilted the bucket to show the berries. 

“This isn’t your land,” she said. “It’s posted. You know better. Give me those berries.” 

I silently handed her the bucket, which the woman dumpedinto her basket. She thrust the bucket back at me. The lady thenmarched toward the chatter of Liz and Sarah and confiscated their berries. She tracked down Rob and took his too. The ladypointed back to the woods from where we had come. 

“Git,” she said. “You are trespassing. I will call your daddy; don’t think I won’t.” 

We trudged away, sullen. You could hear the muttering of thunder in the west. Once safe in the cover of the woods, Sarah looked at us with flashing eyes and began bitterly to denounce the lady: 

“Who does she think she is? They have lots of berries. She is a thief, a goddamn thief!” 

Liz just walked on. Rob and I let Sarah march aheadfuming. As we recrossed the stream, I spotted a water snake on the bank in the throes of swallowing a bullfrog. The frog puffed tranquilly as the snake’s inching jaws and throat enveloped it. The frog-snake wriggled like an alien god.

3. Eastern Garter Snake. 

We sprinted from the upper pasture, the three of us, headingtoward home in a ragged pack. It was a sunny spring day, butraw with a biting wind. All morning, we had ranged, exploring past our own land and onto our neighbors’ farms, reaching fields we had never seen before. Everywhere the ground was covered in mud and mats of flattened weeds, until recently buried under the snow. The air smelled startingly fresh, like the tang of a retreating glacier. Laurie, my little sister, had found a cow tooth in a ravine peeking out from a rivulet of melt water. We were sure it had come from a mammoth.  Now Todd ran ahead, pulling a soggy paper kite that spun overhead like a pinwheel. 

As we came down past the orchard and crossed the road toward the house, we saw Rob. He stood with a stick next to a rusting livestock water tank flipped over next to the haybarn.  Approaching, we saw the tank was in full sun and covered with a mating mass of braiding, seething garter snakes.  We stared. 

With his stick, Rob delicately pried a snake loose from the pile and grabbed it. While the snake wriggled in alarm, Rob trotted over to the yard where my sister Sarah was watching himwith rolling eyes. She was terrified of snakes. As Rob approached, she put up her fists and shrieked, “Rob, don’t you…” Then, overwhelmed with terror, Sarah fled with a long, ululating scream as Rob chased her behind the house.

4. Queen Snake. 

I stood one summer’s day with my brothers Rob and Todd on muddy grass at the edge of a pond where heifers came to drink. We were all in swimming trunks. Our neighbors the Hartletts owned the pond. From the road you could look down at it, a glittery blue-green disk in the lazy sun. Up close, the pond smelled like a wet dog, with cattails lining much of the shore. Kate Hartlett was with us, Katy the Daredevil. She was older, Rob’s age, and knew no fear. Katy would walk the highest beams of our haybarn, taunting us from her teetering perch. Today, she wore a bright yellow two-piece bathing suit.

The trick to swimming in that pond was to take a running leap and hope to launch yourself far enough out to avoid the leeches lurking in the muddy shallows. As we eyed the swim-raft at the far end of the pond, Katy said, “Close your eyes!” We did. When we opened them again, Katy streaked by and jumped. She had taken off her top. Before she hit the water, I saw Katy’s breasts flash like a glimpse of angels. 

My brothers and I followed, cannoning into the pond and hooting. I tread water for a long while with only eyes and nose above the surface, hiding my erection, like a lusty muskrat. Then I sank, slowly exhaling as I dropped into the greener depths, a bubble stream spiraling over my head. I looked up to see a snakeswimming far above me in a perfect S as if it were crawling across the sky.

5. Ghost Snake.

It was a gray November day. We hadn’t seen the farm in years, since we sold it after mom’s death. The place looked good. The buildings carried a fresh coat of paint and the jumble of rusty machinery that once crowded around the barns had been hauled away.  

We had just come from Rob’s funeral. My brother died of liver cancer a week earlier. The rest of us brothers and sisters had made it to the church that morning. Later, we went to the cemetery for the burial service, where the full-on dirt smell of the freshly dug grave oppressed me. After services, Laurie, Todd, and Kevin shared a rental car back to the airport, but Liz, Sarah, and I were staying an extra day and decided to see the farm again.

The owners were very nice, inviting us to take a walk if we liked. We started across the stubble of the hay field, bundled like woodchucks in our coats. Liz and I were mostly quiet, but Sarah veered between bright chatter and muffled weeping. She had taken Rob’s death the hardest—feeling what we all felt, his absence, a sudden gap in our family’s defenses.

Soon we came to the edge of the woods where the farm ended and the rest of the world continued on. We stepped under the trees, threading our way past bare saplings and underbrush. Down near the creek, I saw in the leaf litter what looked like a faded paper wrapper. I looked more closely. It was a pale, translucent snake-skin, about three feet long, marked with faint bands. The front of the skin was split at the mouth and bunchedup, but the body and part of the tail were intact. I could make out the opaque spots of its eyes. I tugged and smoothed the skin and laid it on the ground. 

Liz and Sarah had walked ahead to the creek bank. I joined them in the failing light. We hugged. I said that we should go to the Blue Haven in Lansing for cheeseburgers. As we returned through the hayfield, we saw the old farmhouse ahead floating in the dusk, windows glowing.

Jim Wright (he/him) lives in central New York State, USA. He writes short stories when he can and works as a school psychologist when he must. He is a member of the Downtown Writer’s Center in Syracuse, NY.