Baby Garter, home

Mondays have long been special. In addition to the unforgiving deadline imposed by the weekly natural history column, A Naturalist's Journal, that I've written since 1978—Dear Lord, I have to come up with something to say...—Mondays have also become the day when I can spend time with my grandson Luc, whom I take to his piano lesson after school and then, if he has the time, engage in his favorite pursuit: combing the ridge for frogs. Perhaps he caught the batrachian bug from me, perhaps it arrived on its own. Whatever its origin, we were out there this afternoon, a delightfully warm and sunny one, and we were searching for that young Wood Frog I'd seen earlier. We didn't find it, but just as we were about to give up, Luc shrieked and jumped as a little snake slithered past his feet. It was a very young Garter Snake, no doubt recently born, and it was making its way in the world, through the grass and into the leaf litter in the woods. It wasn't the amphibian we'd been seeking, but, in a pinch, a reptile would certainly do.