Only a few weeks were left before summer vacation from school. The children were beginning to get restless and yearned for freedom from the constraints of the classroom. It was a warm spring Saturday, ideal for an outing in the park. Perhaps this was just what was needed for a case or two of spring fever. Mary gathered some food into a basket and the family headed out to Fort Amanda Park. Upon arrival our four kids scattered to explore the already familiar park to see what new things they might discover. They scoured parts of the riverbank and some of the scant woods in the park and eventually returned to the picnic area with sharpened appetites.

After a light lunch we all started on the short walk to the monument that we always visited when at the park. We strolled leisurely, stopping frequently to observing the spring flowers and new green sprigs along the way.

“Look what I found,” I heard Catherine say as I turned to look at her find. 

“Catherine!” her mother gasped when she saw it draped around her daughter’s neck.

“It’s just a garter snake,” I said, “It’s harmless.” We all knew that there were no poisonous snakes in our neck of the woods.

“Let me take it home with me,” pleaded Catherine, “We can make a cage for it. It’ll make a nice pet.”

After a bit more discussion the two-foot-long snake went home with us. We put together a cage made mostly of screen wire. The snake got reasonable care. It was fed every week. It seemed to like night crawlers and bugs. Sometimes I took the kids fishing at a little pond not too far from home. The fish we caught were tiny. The smallest of these made a nice meal for the snake. It was interesting to watch the snake feed on a little fish. He swallowed the fish head first, his jaws then his body expanding to conform to the shape of the fish.

One day in August I looked in on the snake and was surprised to see a dozen baby snakes in the cage. This excited my family. We hadn’t even known that the snake was a girl. She was thereafter called Gertie.

Some ignorance was dispelled the next morning when I counted the babies again. There were only six or eight present. Gertie must have gotten hungry, but that hungry? Imagine, a mother eating her own babies! I rescued the survivors and found Gertie something else to eat.

One-day, later on someone fed Gertie and didn’t get the cage securely shut. Gertie escaped! Care and feeding of the babies turned out to be more difficult than looking out for only their mother. After a couple of them died it was deemed right to release them to fend for themselves, and so it happened.

One day in early fall our neighbor, Jean Wright was tending her flower garden next door when I heard an outburst from her direction.

“Yikes” I heard her scream, “A snake!” It was then that I was sure that Gertie was back in the care of Mother Nature and happier for it, no doubt.