The Big Chill continues, but the rain has diminished from steady to sporadic. Heck, this afternoon, the sun even came out... and so did I, to both walk and work... and, of course, to feed the wood stove's appetite. This is insane, necessary fires in June, but it's what we're requiring. My work schedule today allowed me to do no more than trek the yard and the back woods, and I'm trying to rein in my desire to simply leave at dawn and not return from explorations until dusk... Duties call, and so I'm working on house projects, as well as writing, and in the course of trying to finish a stone retaining wall, I made a happy discovery: under a bumpy rock was a small Ring-necked Snake that was probably either hiding from the wet weather or waiting for prey to arrive. These handsome, easy to identify serpents are quite common, and though they actually possess a mildly venomous saliva, this poses no risk to us. So I could have handled the reptile with no fear of dire problems—I'm not sure the Ring-necked could have bitten me and broken my skin if it tried—but this time, I chose to let sleeping serpents lie and instead took lots of pictures. The last one, of course, is a blur: Diadophis punctatus sensing that it was no longer protected in its rock hideout and vanishing in search of another one, most likely within the abundant crevices created by the wall project, a.k.a. serpent habitat.