Critters

    I'm sitting on the front steps while the sun is shining, hoping to absorb enough  RDA of Vitamin D.  If not do-able now, when I am outside every day, what might befall my paltry level when winter comes.  My eye falls on the hole in the ground, no more than 3 feet from my doorstep, where the bees had been.  The hole had been excavated by some unknown creature 2 nights in a row, ever since the hole had been sprayed with bee-killer.  It had been left open since then, for several days, and I decided to fill it in.  I felt relatively safe doing so because the upturned soil was strewn with bee corpses amidst the excavated honey combs.  I grabbed my trusty little garden spade and packed all the dirt back into the hole.  I thought I would finish by putting one of the fairly large stones, which David had placed beneath the nearby barberry bushes some years ago,  on top of the hole, to discourage any more diggings.  The first stone was too heavy, or too enmeshed in the grasses for me to extract, so I tried for a smaller stone.  As I  picked it up, a garter snake, which had evidently been seeking heat along the side of the stone, emerged in the grass.  A little startled, I waited for it to slither away, as they usually do, but this snake continued to writhe around, twisting its body into spiral after spiral.  I wondered why until I looked closer and saw that my foot was on the back part of its body.  I stepped off, and gone was the snake.