St Patrick

At the very same spot that a couple of days ago I persuaded the grass snake to quit the unmetalled sandy road, this morning on my way down to the shoreline, there's a dead adder. It's at a point near a barn on a slight rise where the sun strikes hot - or as hot as it gets in September in Finland, which this year is fairly hot: 19 degrees today. On the sand, an obvious place for reptiles to bask. When I pick it up, it reaches from the ground almost to my waist. It's roadkill, though nothing will eat it but scavenging beetles and other insects. The poor beast's intestines are coiled out; blackened blood coating them with around that, a grime of sandy soil. I examine the head and teeth with care, noting the grin of death, and then stretch the dead snake out to rest in the cool grass. It was a big male, as thick as a child's wrist, with a zig of black lightning all along its spine.

Having tired of the conversation of geese - it's all one sided - they never listen - I head for home and here at this same wee rise in the road is an adder. A strong male again, guts erupting. Thinking it's the one of the morning, I check anyway; but there's that one I laid in the grass still unmoving, dead. I retrace my few steps, noticing blood staining the dirt and examine the second one. He has a yellow underpart to his tail. As I lift him to measure and heft, he writhes gently and I realise he's still alive. It's hard to know what to do - I don't kill things. Is the viper suffering? I lay him in the grass like the first and at this point I notice the small nick on my pinky - bleeding gently. My brain tells me that a dead adder and a half dead one don't bite and I'm sure I was careful to keep my fingers away from fangs, but I suck the knuckle and spit anyway, an atavistic but maybe prudent reaction.

Having finished work for the day, and since it's still early - light and warm, I ramble down to visit the geese again. I'm ever hopeful of engaging them in a short discourse. My two adders are still there, the second cold now; basking between the two corpses, on the dirt road in the last of the day's heat is a female adder. I have no truck with anthropomorphism but nevertheless it's hard not to wonder: why a female? Why now and why between two dead males. I know the logical explanations.

I pluck a long stem of rosebay willow herb with its seeds still adhering, to persuade her to leave the road. This is all getting a little biblical. I'm feeling like some latter day saint (not a Mormon, that would be odd) but a sort of Patrick, banishing snakes from a dirt track in Mynämäki. The snake bares her fangs and raises her head to strike as I gently brush. A long moment passes then we both retire: she to the long grass gracefully, me a step backwards with none of the grace of a saint.