Sleepless Nights and Kisses for Breakfast by Matteo Bussola

Author:Matteo Bussola
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-04-18T12:10:18+00:00

The Snake

I went to take out the trash and saw a snake.

A whip snake, I’m sure. Not too long, a baby I think. It was in the street.

Knowing our neighbors, I realized it was doomed. So I did something that before Paola, I never would have done even if I’d lived a thousand lives: I went inside, put two rubber gloves on one hand, grabbed the fireplace tongs with the other, and went out.

The snake was still there, almost in the same spot. I approached slowly, breathing hard, and in a flash caught it by the tail. It jerked in fright and started to wriggle and coil as if it were having an epileptic fit. I nearly lost it because for an instant the idea crossed my mind that it might be another kind, since I know about as much about snakes as I do about soccer. Running like an old man with a fishing rod being chased by a murderer, I got to the woods in two seconds flat and tossed it in a bush.

Then I went back into the house, googled “heart attack symptoms,” and after a few minutes, “how to catch a whip snake.”

Never catch it by the tail, it says. Because “if you do and you don’t keep their head still with your other hand, they can give painful bites.”

There you go, by dumb luck I’d come upon the only lazy whip snake in the Veneto.

Anyway, it’s like they say: it takes one to know one.

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