THE GRASS-SNAKE AND ADDER
“_Tommy Smith has a talk with the grass-snake, and then
With the adder: they’re both as conceited as men._”
WHEN Tommy Smith had said good-bye to the hare, he thought he would
walk home through some woods which were not far off. So off he set
towards them, and as he went along he said to himself, “I know there
are a great many animals that live in the woods. Now I wonder which of
them will be the first to have a talk with me. Let me see. The pigeon
and the squirrel both live there, for I have often seen them together
on the same tree. And then there is the—” Good gracious! What was
that just gliding out from under a bush? Tommy Smith gave a start and
a jump, and well he might, for it was a large snake, perhaps three
feet long. He was so surprised that, at first, he didn’t quite know
what to do, and before he had made up his mind, it was too late to do
anything, for the snake had wriggled away into another bush. “It was
an adder,” said Tommy Smith out loud. “That, at least, is an animal
which I _ought_ to kill, because it is poisonous.”
“I beg your pardon,” said a sharp, hissing voice. “I am not an adder,
and I am _not_ poisonous.”
Tommy Smith looked all about, but he could see nothing. Still, he felt
sure that it must be the snake who had spoken, because the voice came
from the very centre of the bush into which he had seen it go. So he
answered, “Of course it is very easy for you to say that, but everybody
knows that snakes are poisonous, and, if you are not a snake, I should
just like to know what you are.”
“I did not say that I was not a _snake_,” said the voice again.
“Of course I am, but I am not an adder for all that. There are two
different kinds of snakes in this country. One is the adder, which is
poisonous, and the other is the grass-snake, which is quite harmless.
Now _I_ am the grass-snake, so if you had killed me, you would have
done something very wrong, for you would have killed a poor harmless
animal.”
“Well,” said Tommy Smith, “if that is true, I am glad I didn’t kill
you. But are you quite sure?”
“If you don’t believe _me_,” said the snake, “you must get some good
book of natural history, and there you will find it mentioned that we
grass-snakes are quite harmless. It is the great superiority which our
family have always had over that of the adder. People may call _him_ a
‘poisonous reptile,’ but they cannot speak of _us_ in that way. If they
were to, they would only show their ignorance.”
“But how am I to know which is one and which is the other?” asked Tommy
Smith.
“You will not find _that_ very difficult,” the grass-snake answered;
“and if you will promise not to hurt me, I will come out from where I
am and show you.”
Of course Tommy Smith promised (you see he was getting a much better
boy to animals than he used to be), and directly he had, the snake
came gliding out from under the bush, and lay on the ground just at
his feet. “Now”, he said, “to begin with, I am a good deal longer than
an adder. I should just like to see the adder that was three feet
long, and _I_ am an inch longer than that. No, indeed! Whenever you
see such a fine, long snake as I am, you may be sure that it is a nice
grass-snake, and not a nasty adder.”
“I won’t forget that,” said Tommy Smith. “But, I suppose, snakes grow
like other animals. How should I be able to tell you from an adder if I
were to meet you before you were three feet long?”
“Why, by my skin, to be sure!” said the grass-snake. “Look how
beautifully it is marked, and what a fine greenish colour it is. I
may well be proud of it, for a very great poet indeed has called it
‘enamelled,’ and says that it is fit for a fairy to wrap herself up in.
Think of _that_! The adder’s is quite different, only a dull, dirty
brown, which I _might_ call ugly if I were ill-natured. But I am _not_,
so I will only say that it is plain. I don’t think any fairy would like
to wrap herself in _his_ skin.”
“But are there fairies?” said Tommy Smith.
“There are, as long as you are a little boy,” said the grass-snake;
“but as soon as you are grown up there will be none.”
“How funny!” said Tommy Smith. “But do you know, Mr. Grass-Snake,
I should not like to wrap myself up in your skin, even if I could,
because it is so hard and covered with scales. And besides, how could
the fairies get into it without killing you first? I don’t suppose you
can change it as the frog and the toad do.”
“Not change it!” said the grass-snake. “And why not, pray? I should
think myself a very stupid animal if I could not do _that_. Of course I
change it, and then it looks and feels quite different to what it did
when it was on me. You see, it is only just the outer part which comes
off. That is quite thin, and I don’t think you would find it _very_
much harder than the petal of a flower. Some day, perhaps, you may
find it if you look about in the grass or the bushes; for I rub myself
against the grass or bushes to get it off.”
[Illustration: “THERE ARE THREE FROGS IN MY STOMACH AT THE MOMENT”]
“Then you do not swallow your skin as the toad does?” Tommy Smith asked.
“I should not like to do anything so nasty,” said the grass-snake
angrily, “and I wish you wouldn’t keep talking to me about frogs and
toads. They are very low animals, and only fit to be eaten.”
Tommy Smith was quite shocked when he heard this, and he said, “Take
care, Mr. Grass-Snake. Frogs and toads are very useful animals, and my
friends, too. So I won’t let you eat them.”
“That is talking nonsense,” said the grass-snake. “You can’t help my
eating them, especially frogs. Why, there are three frogs in my stomach
at this moment.”
Directly Tommy Smith heard that, he made a dart at the grass-snake,
and caught hold of him before he could get away. I don’t know what he
meant to do. Perhaps he meant to kill the poor snake, which would have
been very wrong, as you will see. But before he had time to do anything
at all, two curious things happened. One was that the snake opened his
mouth very wide indeed, and out of it came first one, then another,
and then a third frog. Yes; three large frogs came out of the snake’s
mouth, one after the other, and there they all lay on the grass. That
was one funny thing, and the other was that, as soon as Tommy Smith
caught hold of the snake, the snake began to smell in a way that was
not at all pleasant. Indeed, it was such a _very_ nasty smell that
Tommy Smith was glad to drop him, so that he got away into the bush
again.
“Ah, ha!” the snake said, as soon as he was safe, “I thought you
wouldn’t hold me very long. Just look at your hand now.”
Tommy Smith looked at his hand. It had a thick yellowish fluid on it,
which made it feel quite moist, and it was this fluid which had such
a disagreeable smell. He was very much offended with the grass-snake,
and he called out to him, “I think that is a very nasty trick to play,
indeed.”
“I thought you wouldn’t like it,” replied the grass-snake, “and that is
just why I did it. I wanted you to let me go, and, you see, you very
soon had to. I always do that when anyone catches me; and, for my
part, I think it is a very clever idea of mine.”
“But how do you do it?” asked Tommy Smith, whilst he stooped down and
wiped his hand on the grass.
“Why, I hardly know,” said the grass-snake. “It comes naturally to me.
Nobody can be cleaner or more well-behaved than I am, as long as I am
treated properly. But when I am attacked, and my life is in danger, I
do the only thing which I can do to protect myself. It is just as if
you had a bottle of something which smelt so strongly that when you
took out the cork and sprinkled it about, nobody could stay in the
room. Now I have something which smells like that, only instead of
keeping it in a bottle, I carry it under my skin, and when I want to
use it, then, instead of taking out a cork, I just open my skin, and it
comes out in little drops all over me.”
“Open your skin?” said Tommy Smith. “Why, how do you do that?”
“I don’t know _how_ I do it,” said the grass-snake, “but I _do_ do it.”
“Well,” Tommy Smith said, “however you do it, I think it is a very
nasty habit. And besides, I shouldn’t have caught hold of you if you
hadn’t told me that you had been eating frogs. I think it is very cruel
of you to eat them. Why do you do it?”
“Why do I do it?” answered the grass-snake. “Why, because I feel
hungry, to be sure. Why do you eat sheep, and oxen, and pigs, and
ducks, and fowls, and turkeys?”
“Oh! but everybody eats them,” said Tommy Smith.
“Every _snake_ eats frogs,” said the grass-snake. “We were made to eat
them, and the frogs were made for us to eat. That is my theory. It is a
good one, I feel sure, for it explains _the facts_ and makes _me_ feel
comfortable.”
“But they are so useful,” said Tommy Smith; “and they do so much good
in the garden.”
“I don’t eat them all,” said the grass-snake, “and I don’t often go
into gardens. Frogs and toads may be very useful, but perhaps if I
didn’t eat some of them there would be too many of them in the world,
and then, instead of being useful, they would be a nuisance. You see,
I don’t eat them all. I leave just as many as are wanted, as long as
_you_ don’t kill them. But if _you_ were to kill them too, then there
would be too few.”
Tommy Smith thought a little, and then he said, “Are you obliged to eat
them?”
“Of course I am,” said the grass-snake, “just as much as you are
obliged to eat beef and mutton. You would think it very hard if you
were to be killed just for eating your dinner. Then why should you want
to kill me for eating mine? No, no; take my advice, and learn this
lesson. Never kill one animal for eating another animal.”
Tommy Smith thought over this for a little, and it seemed to him to be
right. “After all,” he thought, “the frog and the toad eat insects,
and if no animal might eat any other animal, then a great many animals
would die of starvation, and that would be very dreadful.” So he said
to the grass-snake, “Well, Mr. Grass-Snake, I think you are right, and,
if you come out of your bush, I will not try to catch you any more.” So
the grass-snake came wriggling out again, and then Tommy Smith asked
him why he had brought the frogs out of his mouth after he had eaten
them.
“It was because you frightened me,” said the grass-snake. “You see,
I wanted to get away, and, with three frogs inside me, I felt rather
heavy. But as soon as the frogs were gone I was much lighter, and could
go much quicker. Now don’t you think it was a _very_ clever idea?”
“I don’t think it was a very _clean_ idea,” said Tommy Smith; “but
as you were frightened, perhaps you couldn’t help it. But now, Mr.
Grass-Snake, are there any other clever things which you can do, and
which are not quite so nasty? If there are, I should like to hear about
them.”
“I can lay eggs,” said the grass-snake, “which is more than the adder
can do.”
“But can you really lay them?” said Tommy Smith; “and do you make a
nest for them, like a bird?”
“No,” said the grass-snake. “A bird makes a nest for her eggs because
she has to sit on them, and she wants a nice, comfortable place to sit
in. Now I don’t sit on my eggs, for that is not at all necessary. I
just find a nice, warm, moist place for them, and when I have laid them
there, I go away and leave them. I have no time to sit on them like a
bird. I am much too busy.”
“But how are your eggs ever hatched?” said Tommy Smith.
“Oh,” said the grass-snake, “I am so clever that I know the heat of the
place where they lie will be enough to hatch them. So when they are
once safely laid, I don’t bother about them any more.”
“Yes,” said Tommy Smith; “but if you go away, who is there to look
after the young snakes when they come out of the egg?”
“They look after themselves,” said the grass-snake. “Birds are like
little boys and girls. They are great babies, and want someone to take
care of them whilst they are young. But we snakes are so clever that as
soon as we come into the world we can take care of ourselves, and don’t
want anyone to help us.”
“I should like to see some of your eggs,” said Tommy Smith. “What are
they like?”
“They are white,” said the grass-snake, “and they are joined together
in a long string, sometimes as many as sixteen or even twenty. So you
may think how beautiful they look, like a necklace of very large
pearls. Only they are not hard like pearls. Their shell is soft, and
not at all like the shell of a bird’s egg.”
“I _should_ like to see them,” said Tommy Smith.
“Well,” said the grass-snake, “you must look about in manure-heaps, and
then, perhaps, you will find some. That is the sort of place that I
like to lay them in.”
Tommy Smith thought that this was another nasty habit of the
grass-snake, but he didn’t like to say so, because he had said it twice
before; so, after a little while, he said, “And do you really like
being a snake, Mr. Grass-Snake?” You see he had to say something, and
he didn’t quite know what to say.
“Like it?” said the grass-snake. “Of course I do. I should be very
sorry to be anything else. Yes, we snakes have a happy life. In summer
we crawl about and eat frogs, and in winter we find some nice place to
go to sleep in.”
“Then do you sleep all the winter?” said Tommy Smith.
“Of course,” said the grass-snake. “What else is there to do? There are
no frogs in winter, and it is cold and unpleasant. The best thing is
to go to sleep, and that is what I always do.”
Now whilst Tommy Smith was talking to the grass-snake he kept looking
at the poor dead frogs that were lying on the grass, and you can think
how surprised he was when, all at once, one of them moved a little,
and then began to crawl away very slowly. Then the others moved, and
began to crawl away too. So they were not dead after all. You see,
when a snake eats a frog (or anything else), he does not chew it, as
we do, but just swallows it whole, and then sometimes the frog will
keep alive for some time inside the snake’s stomach. Tommy Smith spoke
to the frogs, but they were too faint to answer. So he took them up,
and washed them in a little ditch which was close by, and then laid
them in a nice long tuft of grass. When he had done that, he came back
to where he had left the grass-snake, but he did not find him there
again. “Where are you?” he called out. “Do you mean me?” said a voice
quite near him. It was a hissing voice, certainly, and sounded a good
deal like the grass-snake’s. But still it did not sound quite the
same, Tommy Smith thought. So he said, “I mean you, if you are the
grass-snake,” in rather a doubtful tone of voice. “No, indeed,” hissed
the voice again, “I am something better than a grass-snake. _I_ am an
adder.” And as the adder said this, he came crawling out from a little
clump of furze-bush, where he had lain hidden.
Tommy Smith saw that what the grass-snake had said was true, for the
adder’s body was shorter and of a duller colour than the grass-snake’s.
His head, too, was different. It was flatter, and swelled out more on
each side where it joined the neck, so that the neck looked smaller in
proportion to the size of the head. Altogether, Tommy Smith felt sure
that the next time he went out for a walk and saw a snake, he would be
able to tell whether it was a grass-snake or an adder. “And if it is an
adder,” he said to himself, “why, I ought to kill it.” And then he said
out loud, “Mr. Adder, you don’t seem at all afraid of me; but, do you
know, I think I ought to kill you, because you are poisonous.”
“_I_ think you ought to leave me alone because I am poisonous,” said
the adder. “For if you were to try to kill me, I should have to bite
you, and then, perhaps, _I_ should kill _you_.”
Tommy Smith did not like this remark of the adder’s at all. He began
to feel afraid himself, and he would have liked to have run away. But
he thought that if he did, the adder might attack him when his back
was turned. So he stood quite still, and only said, “Why aren’t you
harmless like the grass-snake?”
“That is not a very polite question!” said the adder in reply. “_I_
belong to the poisonous branch of the family, and I am proud to belong
to it. The grass-snake is a poor creature, and I pity him. I should
like to see anyone catch _me_ in the same way that they catch _him_. I
would soon teach them the difference between us.”
“But you do so much harm,” said Tommy Smith.
“What harm have I ever done _you_?” said the adder.
“You have not done me any harm,” said Tommy Smith, “but that is because
I have never seen you before now.”
“_You_ may never have seen _me_,” said the adder, “but _I_ have seen
_you_ very often. Sometimes I have been quite near to where you were
walking, but when I have heard you coming, I have just crawled out of
the way, and let you go by without hurting you. Now don’t you think
that was very good of me? I should just like to know what you have to
complain of.”
“You have never hurt me, I know,” said Tommy Smith. “But think how many
people you do hurt.”
“Do you know anybody that I have hurt?” asked the adder.
“No,” answered Tommy Smith, “I don’t know anybody; but I am sure you
must have hurt a great many people, because you are poisonous.”
“Well,” said the adder, “I think you might walk about a long while
asking people before you found anyone that I had done any harm to. I
never interfere with people unless they interfere with me, so I think
the best thing they can do is just to let me alone. It is true that my
two front teeth are poisonous, and that I can kill some creatures by
biting them. But these creatures are not men or women, but only mice
or small birds or frogs. You know I have to eat them, so I may just as
well kill them before I begin. The grass-snake eats _his_ frogs alive.
That is much more cruel than if he killed them first, as I do.”
“How do you kill them?” said Tommy Smith. “I suppose you sting them
with your forked tongue, and then they die.”
“Did you not hear me say that I bit them,” said the adder; “and that I
had two poisonous teeth? My tongue is not poisonous at all. There is no
more harm in it than there is in yours.”
“Oh! but, Mr. Adder,” cried Tommy Smith, “do you know I once went to
the Zoological Gardens in London, and I saw the snakes there, and
whenever one of them put out his tongue, as you do yours, the people
all said, ‘Look at its sting! Look at its sting!’”
“That is only because they were ignorant people,” said the adder, “and
did not know any better. No; it is the two long teeth in my upper jaw
that are poisonous, and, if you will just kneel down, I will open my
mouth so that you can see them, and then I can explain all about it to
you.”
Tommy Smith didn’t quite like the idea of kneeling down and putting
his face close to the mouth of the adder. He had heard of men who
put their heads inside a lion’s mouth, and he thought that this would
be almost as dangerous. However, the adder promised not to bite him,
and as he said he never _had_ bitten a little boy in the whole of
his life, and should not think of doing so without a proper reason,
he thought he might trust him. So he knelt down and looked. Then the
adder opened his mouth, and, as he did so, two little white things like
fish-bones seemed to shoot forward into the front part of it. “Those
are my two poison-fangs,” he said. “When my mouth is shut, they lie
back against my upper jaw, but as soon as I open it to bite anyone,
they shoot forward so as to be in the right place.” Tommy Smith looked
at the teeth. They were as sharp as needles and almost as thin, but
they were not straight like common needles, but curved backwards like
crochet-needles. “What curious teeth!” he said.
“Perhaps they are more curious than you think,” said the adder; “just
look at the tips of them, and see if you notice anything.”
Tommy Smith looked as the adder told him, and he was surprised to see
a tiny little hole at the tip of each tooth. “Why, Mr. Adder,” he said,
“it seems to me as if your teeth were hollow and wanted stopping.”
“They _are_ hollow,” said the adder, “and I will tell you why. At the
root of each of them I have a little bag which is full of poison. You
cannot see it, of course, because it is hidden under the flesh of my
upper jaw. But things which cannot be seen are very often felt. Now,
when I bite an animal, these little bags open, and a drop or two of
poison runs down each tooth where it is hollow, so that it goes into
the flesh of that animal and mixes with its blood.”
“And does that kill it?” asked Tommy Smith.
“Oh yes!” answered the adder; “because I only bite small animals. It
would not kill a horse, or a cow, or even a pig, unless it was very
young. But it kills field-mice, and shrew-mice, and things of that
sort.”
“But there is one thing, Mr. Adder, which I don’t understand,” said
Tommy Smith. “I thought that one had to swallow poison for it to kill
one. But you say that this poison of yours goes into the blood.”
“I don’t know anything about poisons that have to be swallowed,” said
the adder; “I only know about _my_ poison, and I use that in the way I
have told you. _My_ poison must go into the blood. If you were only to
swallow it, I daresay it would not hurt you at all.”
“I should not like to try,” Tommy Smith said. “But are you going?” for
the adder had begun to crawl away.
“Yes,” said the adder; “I am going now, for I have plenty to do. I
should not have wasted my time like this, only I heard that poor
creature, the grass-snake, talking about himself, so I thought I would
just show you what a much more important animal I am than he.”
“I think that you are rather conceited, Mr. Adder,” said Tommy Smith.
“The grass-snake is very clever. He can lay eggs, and he says that is
more than you can do.”
“_I_ should be ashamed to do such a thing,” said the adder. “A young
grass-snake _requires_ an egg, but a young adder knows how to do
without one. _We_ can crawl as soon as we come into the world. As for
my being conceited, perhaps I am, just a little. But that is natural. I
can _never_ forget that I have _poison_ flowing in my veins. Now I will
say good-bye, for I have plenty to do, and must not waste my time any
longer.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Adder,” Tommy Smith called after him, for he thought he
had better be friendly with such an animal. “I hope that you will never
bite me.” But the adder merely gave a contemptuous hiss, and was gone.