Legend has it that St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, drove snakes from the island sometime in the fifth century. The cursed snakes attacked him during his 40-day fast, so he chased the legless reptiles into the sea.
It’s a great story, one worth celebrating with a black-as-coal Guinness every March 17. A party is always enlivened by an entertaining theme suffused with a colorful origin story. All one need do is head to Butte on St. Patrick’s Day to understand the success of the snake-banishing legend.
The truth is a bit more sciency. Snakes probably never existed on the island, and if they did, they didn’t survive the last ice age. When the ice sheets retreated some 12,000 years ago, land bridges allowed snakes to colonize Great Britain, but subsequent rising sea levels flooded the remaining land bridge before the snakes slithered as far as Ireland.
Cold-blooded reptiles rely, of course, on the heat of the sun and warmer air of more southern climes to survive. They need solar power the way a doomsday prepper requires it so they can review the latest musings of their compatriots on the internet as they await the apocalypse.
Snakes are pretty decent survivors, as well. Cold and gloomy Ireland might not be ideal habitat for most snakes, but they could survive. Snakes in cold climates just have to find somewhere underground, below the frost line, to ride out winter.
Which brings me to my most recent snake adventure. I’m sleeping in a basement bedroom in temporary quarters at the moment. Winter is yet to hit the Great Plains, and my proper egress window that reaches about four feet below ground level has to be enticing for a cold-blooded critter staking out winter denning sites.
Nighttime temperatures are finally getting down to, well … it’s barely been in the 40s here, but whatevs. A few of the trees have given up waiting on a frost and are dropping leaves despite the summer-like weather.
So yesterday, as I sat in bed reading, I noticed the basement window had drawn my cat’s rapt attention. We’d recently been invaded by crickets, which the feline seems to enjoy hunting, even if harming these noisy brown bugs is considered unlucky in many cultures. But after a moment I saw something else had captured Laney Lou’s gaze; the tail of some unidentified critter swept out from behind the window frame, looking every bit like an octopus reaching a tentacle out from its rocky abode, feeling for a tasty crustacean to munch on.
It was creepy and a little terrifying at first, but once I cleared my mind of demons trying to pull the cat or me into the undead netherworld for all eternity, I realized it was probably a tiny snake. Maybe it was the same critter that rustled the leaves outside the window the night before, rousing a sleepy Laney. I went to the kitchen for coffee and after a moment the cat joined me, producing a dead 5- or 6-inch common garter snake. She dropped it on the rug, purring loudly as she fell upon it, rolling on her victim’s carcass.
I suppose if that cat had spent much time outside she would have learned snakes are also food, rumored to taste a lot like chicken. More so, probably, than the chicken-flavored treats I gave her as a reward and distraction so I could sneak the dead reptile off to the trash.
I like snakes, especially pest-eating sorts like this garter, but not in the house. So I renamed the cat St. Pete for a day and I plan to hoist a Guinness in her well-earned honor come March. Laney’s snake-banishing behavior is anything but myth.
As for the Emerald Isle — which is the name I gave my basement apartment, also for a day — it is for now, like its namesake, finally snake-free.