{"id":444,"date":"2007-08-31T18:03:32","date_gmt":"2007-08-31T22:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rollingonone.com\/blog\/?p=444"},"modified":"2009-02-25T17:59:20","modified_gmt":"2009-02-25T21:59:20","slug":"stalker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rollingonone.com\/blog\/?p=444","title":{"rendered":"Stalker"},"content":{"rendered":"

If that snake had a lawyer, he’d swear out a restraining order against me.<\/p>\n

Back in May, I think it was, I was walking around Cutler Pond when I saw a guy ahead of me looking intently at the ground near the path. He signaled to me to be quiet and pointed out a good-sized black snake. Wait! There were two snakes, curled around each other, one of them black and a smaller one having red and yellow marks, shaped sort of like bowling pins, on the side. Wait! A third snake came along and chased the second one away! We were evidently looking at some sort of snake love triangle.<\/p>\n

When I got back to the office, I found what it was<\/a> (or what they were) on the internet.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen one or the other of those three, or something similar, several times — probably six or eight times — this summer. I haven’t had a camera with me, except for a camera phone that’s not up to the task. Mostly it’s been in just about the same place. One time one was swimming along a couple of feet from shore, going along at about the same speed I was walking. I’m pleased that I’ve learned how to look for it, or maybe for northern water snakes in general. I’ve had better luck a little before noon than later; I think all the people who walk around the pond on their lunch hour alarm the critters enough that they’re harder to find. Two days ago I decided to see if I could find a cast snake skin to print, so I looked very carefully around the area where I’ve seen them. No cast skins, but wait, is that a frog in the grass? I looked closer — no, it’s my pal the snake, standing absolutely still, hiding under a leaf and between the grass. It was hard to find again if I looked away, but there it was. The last two days I’ve found that same leaf in the same place, but no snake.\n<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If that snake had a lawyer, he’d swear out a restraining order against me. Back in May, I think it was, I was walking around Cutler Pond when I saw a guy ahead of me looking intently at the ground near the path. He signaled to me to be quiet and pointed out a good-sized … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Stalker”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingonone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingonone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingonone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingonone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingonone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingonone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingonone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingonone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingonone.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}