Tellio @tellio

Cleaning up around the compost pile this afternoon, I lifted a small pile of garden cloth from atop. There, licking its forked tongue, tasting the air, was a rather large copperhead. I watched its pitted head swing back and forth, sampling the threat molecules. It wouldn’t move. I suspect it had grown fat off all the fecund life cast from the pile: earthworms, crickets, beetles, voles. mice. I wanted so much to hold it, to let it wrap its snaky self onto my hand. No. No. No. #smallstories