About a week ago, Ian and I pulled into our driveway, opened the garage door, and were faced with a snake swallowing a toad in our parking place. Why the snake was in the garage I have no idea. Our first instinct was to try to save the toad, but when we looked around, there was a fair bit of blood on the garage floor, and the toad was at this point at least halfway consumed, so we came to the unwelcome conclusion that we couldn't help.
And anyway, what did help mean? The snake was just being a snake and having a meal. The toad was just unlucky.
It was, however, a nasty glimpse into what happens all the time in "Nature", that place the starry eyed environmentalists like to idealize and hold us all responsible for. It wasn't cuddly, or cute, or controllable. It was horrible. But then again, maybe it wasn't as horrible for the toad as I imagine. I hope not.
The thing that keeps coming back to me is the look in the eyes of the snake and the toad: the toad was being consumed by the snake from the back to the front, and the look in the toad's eyes held no more expression than that of the snake.
That was perhaps the worst thing of all for me.
Country living....
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Poor toad. Lucky snake. Circle of life and all that. Those Disney cartoons that show lions and zebras hanging out together as friends don't really prepare you for the realities of nature, do they?
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