* The author is part of the community of La Vanguardia readers
I have captured for La Vanguardia Readers’ Photos, in the surroundings of Altet, in Urgell, these photographs of the white or striped snake, also known as the ladder snake (Zamenis scalaris).
This snake lives throughout the Iberian Peninsula except for the northern mountainous areas. It is not poisonous, although when they are young they can be more violent, but its bite is harmless.
This snake reaches an average length of 157 cm, although the females are a little larger than the males. It is an easily identifiable snake because it has two parallel black stripes on its brown back.
However, young specimens have a yellowish back with black spots, almost close together, in the shape of a capital H that, together, offer the appearance of a ladder.
Finding a specimen of this snake in the bushes has inspired this story, which I have written in Catalan and which I will reproduce below. Of course, this whole story is invented, perhaps it came out a little negative, but I do want to say that snakes are protected by law and there are consequences to killing them.
If you call 112, they would have to send someone to pick up the snake and take it to safety. Along the roads or fields, if you see them from a certain distance, you can enjoy them. You have to leave them alone and they will do it too. Live and let live.
Jana, fed up with only being scolded at home for looking at her mobile phone, decided to go to the new fountain, where there is good shade and no one will bother her.
He took the road and without lifting his head from his mobile phone, he went towards the source. But halfway through, something spooked her.
He looked up from his cell phone and a scream escaped him, apart from a leap back that in his young life he would have thought he would do.
And Jana said: “You’re not going to bite me, are you?”
And the White Snake answered him: “And you will scold me?”
She does not”.
SB: “Well, I won’t bite you either.”
Her: “Who are you, come out from where you are hiding”.
Silence for answer.
She: “Come on, get out, the joke has already had its fun.”
By answer: Silence.
The White Snake, after a few seconds, replies: “And why can’t it be me?”
She: “Snakes may speak, but humans don’t understand you and you humans, that’s not normal.”
SB: “In other times we all understood each other”.
Her: “Yes, yes, in Paradise, right?”
SB: “Per example.”
Suddenly, everything takes a different turn. A large green snake pokes its head out in a margin on the side.
And he gets into the conversation. The green snake questions the white snake.
SV: “Why are you wasting your time with this human being, don’t you remember how badly they have treated us all these times”.
SB: “Yes, but these humans have the key to our survival.”
SV: “But they are breaking everything and then accusing others. Remember in Paradise, they mess it up and whose fault is it?”
SB: “Sssi ja ho ser, from the serp.”
And he continues to say: “Sssssssss we are on a road because we are hotsssssssssss when they see usssss, directssss to gossip, sssssss pity, no remorse. If they see us on a road, they run to dig a stick to scratch our heads, if not with stones”.
SV: “And on the way we can still run and hide on the banksssss, on the road we are skin, we are not agilessss, the asphalt heats usssss, but it does not help us to crawl”.
SB: “And while we are good for them, we eat small mammals and invertebrates that are also harmful to them.”
SV: “And if for some reason we enter their cash register or other places where they are…”
…”Sssom skin. Interrupts the white snake
SV: “And that the authorities protect us. It is completely forbidden to kill usss”.
SB: “Yes, but it’s the first thing they do.”
SV: “Don’t you see how they lead to self-destruction by themselves. They are not able to give up, not even for themselves, the destruction of the planet as we know it now”.
SB: “Money and power. Esss kill for this”.
SV: “They won’t be able to with the planet, they will have a place, and they will have a bad time”.
SB: “Very well, but in the meantime, other species are disappearing from the face of the Earth.”
Jana was stunned, listening to the conversation of the two snakes, suddenly the cell phone beeps. She looks down at her cell phone, starts chatting and leaves the place. He writes leaving the snakes with his conversation.
