Snake's end

It was almost freezing this morning—upper 30s—and clearly high time to test drive the new woodstove we'd recently had installed. But before its break-in firings, I had to buy yet another part to bring the installation up to the code. En route to the stove store, I drove by a fresh-water marsh I've explored in the past, and I wanted to check it out towards the very end of the odonate flight season. In all likelihood, there'd still be meadowhawks and Shadow Darners working the wetland for bugs. Alas, the dragonflies were few and far between, but in the high part of the marsh, I noticed something at ground level. The whiteness caught my eye, and when I got closer, I spotted a necklace of bleached ribs and vertebrae. It was all that was left of a snake, but its identity would now be impossible for me to determine. Any guess I might make about how it wound up in this position would be pure speculation. Perhaps it wriggled out of the grasp of a raptor. Maybe it escaped the jaws of a mammal, but then succumbed to mortal wounds. All I could do was document its passing: a very still life in the grass.