The Snake The Cat Dragged In

The European Grass snake – Natrix helvetica helvetica, formerly Natrix natrix helvetica, is England’s iconic snake species and the largest native terrestrial reptile we have.

The European Grass snake – Natrix helvetica helvetica, formerly Natrix natrix helvetica, is England’s iconic snake species and the largest native terrestrial reptile we have.

And I’ve seen tons of ’em.

They are expert swimmers and, with the majority of their diet being amphibians and fish, water is where you find them. Places where you also find fishermen, and I was quite the keen fisherman in my younger years. 
My love of fishing and my obsession with reptiles met quite happily in the middle during the summer and autumn months.

I could set up my rods and scour the surrounding area for snakes, lizards, frogs and toads. Grass snakes were easily the most numerous reptiles I found on these little, very localised exertions. Big females lazing in the sun, small males darting through the heavily vegetated edges of the water. On one special occasion at Fulford Heath golf course, fishing for carp on their big central lake, I was watching hatchlings hunting tadpoles in a shallow, warm spawn pool right by my peg.

One other memorable moment I witnessed was the largest grass snake I’d ever seen casually swimming across a shallow section of the Arrow in Redditch. After letting the grass snake disappear without interruption, I waded into the stream of the Arrow and estimated it was more than five feet across where she had crossed. She was beautiful.

I have dozens more stories like this, but this article will focus on one very special interaction I had with Grassie, as he became known.

That bloody cat.

I bought my sister a cat for her birthday one year; my parents had the room, they already had a cat, and I’d already spoken to them about it. Gemma’s birthday present was sorted. Kitten.

I took on a rescue kitten for my sister and she was elated; my parents’ original cat was not impressed, and a couple of years of hilarity and cat nonsense happened. Both of the cats were out in the day and in on the night.

A rule my mother enforced with an iron fist, and no one argued; no one ever did with my Ma.

I would often come home from my chef job to a couple of massacred mice or birds, a couple of times squirrels, once a rabbit that was half-eaten, a bat wing and once, amazingly, a mole.

But none of these predatory behaviours could have prepared me for the phone call I received from my mother in late August.

I got the call while I was at work, and I quote:

“You need to get home now; the cat is fighting an adder!”

Knives down and off I went on a “family emergency”.

When I arrived home, my mother was waiting for me, informing me that the cat was still fighting with the adder in the back garden. I went straight through to the garden to witness the bloody stupid cat flinging around what looked like a very small grass snake.

I gently removed the cat from the situation with my right boot. At speed. He came sauntering back and went straight over to my mother, looking for food. Game over for him.

Not so much for the torn-up little bootlace in my hands.

The sodding cat had ripped up the grass snake hatchling incredibly effectively. Damage to the head, tail, the middle of the body, even the delicate flesh under the chin.

The grass snake was exhausted, literally after the fight of his life, and he had little left to give. I got little more than an uncomfortable hiss and that was too quiet for my liking.

At this point in my life, I had a kingsnake, a royal python, a red-eared slider, two Asian long-tail lizards and a fish tank. And the important part here: I had spare stuff knocking about everywhere.

I managed to pull together a small faunarium, tiny heat mat, substrate, hides and a large and deep water bowl. I furnished his enclosure with stuff straight from outside. My logic being he’s come from outside, so he must be OK with outside things… That trail of thought would lead to several personal breakthroughs over the next few years, but I digress.

Little house ready, I got the snake in there and let him rest.

I’ll leave him to sit and see if he survives the night.

Growing grass

The next morning, I was up and scrabbling through the small faunarium, desperately hoping for a flash of movement as I carefully rummaged around.

And there he was. Curled up in the corner under a small piece of bark I’d dropped in there. 
I let out a breath I didn’t realise I was holding.

He was alive. Now the work began. I had to figure out dietary requirements, and how much he could potentially eat, how much he needed to eat. There were a lot of questions that I didn’t have answers for. There was a lot of information I needed to dig up and 2003 wasn’t the year to do it; the internet was a clunky dial-up thing that ticked excessively when your phone rang. And there wasn’t much covering the captive care of N. helvetica. 
I hit the library and dug through their collection of herpetological research papers. Among them were studies by Robert Vaughan on British grass snakes. I'd been raiding those records for years, but this time I had a rather more pressing reason to read them.

All of Vaughan’s work was based in southern England, but not being a million miles away and still obviously England, I could apply his extensive knowledge to my torn-up little noodle. Let the reading begin. 
I found everything I could possibly need; if I could apply wild behaviour, ecology and diets to a temporarily captive specimen was another matter entirely.

So, with this knowledge in my hand, I got to work.

Nectar of the Gods

The grass snake in my care became “Grassie”. Not a particularly imaginative name, but that has never been my forte. I was hoping at this point that helping animals was going to be my speciality. One way to find out.
I got earthworms out of the garden, bite-size mice from local shops, frog legs from work (handy to be a chef on this occasion) and strips of fresh fish. Little Grassie wasn’t interested. Didn’t take a thing.

I didn’t attempt tong-feeding. He was a wild animal that was already stressed, and waving food in front of him like an Irishman with a flag at the St Patrick’s parade wasn’t going to help. The worms were put in live and wiggling; they didn’t take too long to bury themselves in the substrate. The pinkie mouse, the frog legs and the fish went untouched.

I attempted every day to drop him some food. Each day was the same. Grassie’s stubborn refusal and my disappointment.

Then I had an accidental breakthrough. A worm fell into the partially buried water bowl, and I watched it squirm around trying to dig through the bottom of the bowl. I then saw Grassie move into the water, attracted by the movement, I’d guess, and wrestle the worm out, then drop it. And then he moved back to the water bowl, like he was looking for something. Can I say without any amount of certainty? Absolutely not.

But it did give me an idea.

I had a fish tank with an incredibly healthy and large population of guppies.

For those that don’t know, guppies – Poecilia reticulata – are a small tropical fish originally found in South America. But, thanks to their ability to reproduce quickly and in great number, they have populated Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Antigua, and Jamaica, Africa, Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia.

And I had lots of them.

One scoop of the fish net later, and I had 4 partly grown guppies in Grassie’s water bowl. I sat and I watched.
Grassie approached the water bowl, tongue flicking rapidly in what can only be described as hunting behaviour. He made a beeline straight for the bowl, saw the movement and froze. Nothing but his tongue moving, now in more deliberate, longer strokes. He entered the water slowly, just his head and neck under the surface, and, faster than I could follow, snatched a fish and swallowed it underwater.

Then another.

Then another.

Then he retired from fishing and went back to a hide and coiled up. Done for the day.

Recovery time

Grassie went from strength to strength. Once he had taken some guppies, he broadened his palate. 
I tried strips of fish first. Down they went.

Then I scented the pinkies with fish; he took them too. Then without scenting, and he ate them. Frog legs went down next; I was particularly happy with that; the bone content in the legs would be good for him.
I never got him to take an earthworm.

Two sheds and seven weeks later, Grassie had healed. He was fit and healthy; his wounds had closed and healed almost completely; he still had a lump under his jaw on his right side. A memento from that damn furry hellspawn that brought him into my life.

I remember the last time I saw Grassie: he took off like a shot from my hands, only the third time I’d ever handled him, disappearing into a small pile of leaf litter next to the pond where I imagine he had been caught.

I’ve had cause to rehabilitate several other native reptiles since my encounter with Grassie, but none of them have taught me more than

the snake the cat dragged in.