It was a sunny morning in Wilmington, North Carolina. (There is a reason they call the skies, Carolina blue!) On this particular Saturday morning in July the temperature had soared to 85 degrees and it was only 9:30 a.m.
The children’s “kiddie” pool needed to be filled with clean water. What was currently in it from the previous day’s play session, looked more like the sea weed lagoon from some hidden cove in the North Pacific. I went outside to empty the green grassy grunge when a slithering sneaky snake caught my attention. I screamed a blood-curdling scream that could have raised the hackles on any dog in the next five counties!
I ran inside to get my husband. He told me to get the hoe and kill it. “Get the hoe and kill it?” “Are you crazy? It’s a S-N-A-K-E….not a snail!”
Our next door neighbor had heard my tormented cry of anguish and came to see about the problem. When I described the creature to him he said it sounded like a legless lizard; not a snake.
Hold the phone…a what? A legless lizard?
He explained they were also known by the name of “glass snakes” but they were really part of the lizard family.
We checked around the pool area and to my relief this lizard with no legs had “walked” off.
As my children played that day in their little wading pool, I kept a watchful eye for this reptile with no legs. In my book, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck; or in this case, a snake with an apparent leg disability.
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