END OF A SNAKE
All sorts of items make up local news, from a golden wedding to the killing of a snake. The latter may be a little unusual, particularly in winter, but the other day I read in my paper that two men, while walking on a road in the adjoining county to my own, came upon a grass-snake, an eighteen-inch specimen, and were compelled to cut a stick from the hedge and use it to kill the snake. They thus earned the nearest thing to immortality that local news paragraphs can offer. The news value, if there is any at all in the travels of a grass-snake, seemed to me to be in the odd circumstance of the snake's being out and about in mid-January after a period of very severe weather. Grass-snakes hole up for the winter and for the most part remain dormant. They are quite useful creatures and rather beautiful in summer. People who kill them do so largely out of ignorance. I think.
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