The Slow Worm

I am not a big fan of snakes, largely due to a childhood incident involving surprising a snake whilst running away from an armed sibling.  Suffice to say that the scene from Indiana Jones and Raiders of the lost Ark springs to mind when he falls into that pit of snakes.....

Our garden is full of slow-worms which has presented rather a problem for me over the last few months as inevitably I have to deal with them during weeding chores.  Therefore my time in the garden is punctuated with my regular shrieks of horror when encountering what my mind views as mini-snakes.  

Now I know that they are totally harmless but firstly this:

• They are not slow
• They vary in length and size
• They have tongues likes snakes….Nuff said

Earlier this week, whilst walking the children down the drive to the school, we noticed a scraggy cat pawing and dancing around on the pavement.  Yep….pestering a particularly large slow-worm which in its defence, had wriggled off the pavement and was making its way onto the road.

I don’t really know what came over me but the horror of knowing the poor thing would be fatally imprinted with a tyre tread and in so doing, the memories of my children, I knew I had to take immediate action.

With the sound of cars approaching the school (and slow worm) I made my hasty decision to pick up the “slow-worm” and gently fling him into the safety of our garden whilst chanting internally with a frenzied “***k”,  “***k” and  “aaaagggggghhhhhhhhhh!”

I was instantly rewarded with “Well Done Mummy – that was a big one!”

So too was my near cardiac arrest whilst experiencing the sensation of its cool, coiling body around my fingers……eeeuuuggghhh!!!!!