NICE SNAKE SAM
He wasn’t sure how long it was since he had been born and his brothers and sisters had crawled away from their mother to start their new lives. All he was sure of was that he was really hungry. He was so hungry that he had trouble lifting his head to reach the leaves on the plant above him. Finally, his pointed teeth ripped a little piece of leaf free and he swallowed it. It felt rough and scratchy. He swallowed hard. His stomach hurt. He heard a noise in the grass nearby. He was afraid that it might be dangerous, but he was too weak to hide. He was happy to see that it was another baby snake.
She looked at him. “Were you born by the red and gray rock near the stream?” she asked.
“Yes. Are you one of my sisters?”
“I think so. Are you okay? You look terrible.”
“I think I might be sick. I’ve been eating as much as I can, but I’m still hungry. I can hardly move.”
“There are a lot of really good minnows in the stream. If you can crawl that far, I’ll show you.”
“Minnows?”
“Yes, minnows. You know, little fish. Do you like earthworms better? It rained last night; they shouldn’t be hard to find.”
Now he really felt sick. “I don’t eat other animals.”
“What do you eat?”
“Leaves. I tried moss, but it was hard to swallow. Flowers taste nice but no matter how many I eat, I’m still hungry.”
“You can’t eat leaves! You’re a snake! Snakes have to eat other animals!”
“Why?”
She thought about it for a minute. “I don’t know, but I know they do. I was born knowing that I had to hunt to eat.”
“That sounds awful.”
“I don’t think you’re sick. I think you feel bad because you’re eating the wrong food. I’ll bring you a fat worm.”
“No! I mean, please don’t. Just thinking about eating a worm makes me feel worse.”
She shook her head. “Okay. You’re my brother and I’d like to help, but if you won’t eat what snakes are supposed to eat, I can’t do anything. Good luck.” She slithered away.
He crawled very slowly from the shade of the plant. Maybe sunlight would make him feel better.
THUD, THUD. Thud, thud. He could feel the vibrations of footsteps, some heavier, some lighter. Suddenly, there were two pairs of feet, human feet, right beside him. One pair of feet was much smaller than the other pair.
“Look, Mom! It’s a snake! Is it a baby?” The voice came from far above the smaller feet.
The feet called “Mom” moved even closer. “I think so. It looks like a garter snake. If it is, it’s very young. I’m surprised it hasn’t run away.”
“Do you think it’s okay?”
“I don’t know.” Mom bent down from very high up and brushed the grass next to him with a finger. He was too tired to move. “There is definitely something wrong with this baby,” she said.
“Can we help?”
“We can try. Let’s move him closer to the house where we can keep an eye on him and I’ll call Dr. Chavez and ask if she knows what might be wrong. Why don’t you go get a box. He looks so thin and weak I’d be afraid to hurt him by picking him up.”
“Okay!” The smaller feet thud thudded away.
“Megan!” Mom called, “Better put Marshmallow in the house until we have this little one in a safe place.”
“Good idea, Mom!”
Soon, the smaller feet called “Megan” came back and he found himself being slid into a dry brown thing, then being slid out again onto soft earth in the middle of a lot of flowers.
“There’s some wire mesh in the garage left over from your science project last year,” Mom said. “We can put a circle around him so nothing will bother him. While you find that, I’ll call Dr. Chavez.”
Mom pulled a black thing out of her pocket and poked it with her finger. It made little noises. Then another human that he could hear but couldn’t see, was talking.
“Hello, Dr. Chavez’s veterinary office, may I help you?”
“I hope so,” Mom said. “My daughter and I just found a baby snake that seems to be sick. I’d like to speak to Dr. Chavez if she isn’t busy right now.”
“I’ll check,” the voice said.
A minute later, another human-he-couldn’t-see was talking. He wondered if some humans were invisible.
“Hi, this is Dr. Chavez. I was told you found a sick snake?”
“Hi, Doctor. This is Beth Scott. Our dog Marshmallow is one of your patients. Yes, I think it’s a baby garter snake. He’s very small and very weak.”
“Hmm,” Dr. Chavez said. “I don’t treat very many snakes. Is he eating?”
“Yes I am!” he said, but no one could hear him. “See?” He used all the energy he could and bit a piece of leaf from a flower plant. He lifted his head so Mom could see him swallow it.
Mom was watching. “He just ate a piece of leaf,” she said. “I didn’t know snakes ate plants.”
“They don’t,” Dr. Chavez said. “They can’t. I mean, they can’t digest them; their bodies aren’t designed for it. I’ve never heard of a snake trying to eat plants. I don’t know what to suggest.”
“So there’s nothing we can do?” Mom sounded sad.
“If you want to try, I’ll call a friend who works at the university and the zoo. He’s a herpetologist. If anyone can figure out what’s wrong, it will be him, and I know he’ll be glad to help if he can. He LOVES snakes!”
“Oh, thank you! It’s okay to give him my phone number if he wants to call.”
“You’re welcome. Good luck, and give Marshmallow a hug for me.”
Mom put the black thing in her pocket. Megan came back dragging a piece of wire mesh. While they made a circle around him, Mom told Megan what Dr. Chavez had said.
“What’s a herpetologist?”
“A scientist who specializes in reptiles and amphibians.”
“So Sam will have an expert taking care of him.”
“Sam?”
“It’s the only boy name I could think of that started with “s”. He might be a girl but we can change it if he is.”
“Sam or Samantha,” Mom said, “But we aren’t sure if the expert is going to take care of him. We don’t even know if he’ll call.”
Sam stretched his neck out on the warm earth. He hadn’t understood a lot of what the humans had said and thought, but he knew they wanted to help him. He hoped they could. Soon. His stomach really, really hurt.
Sam was sleeping, dreaming about eating piles of flower petals, when very heavy thuds and lighter ones too, woke him up. Megan’s feet were outside the wire, so were Mom’s. So was another pair of much bigger feet.
“Thank you for coming, Dr. Zajac,” Mom said.
“This sounded like something so unusual that I had to check on it myself.” the voice above the biggest feet said. “I’ll have to take a good look at him – or her.”
“His name is Sam,” Megan said.
The human named Dr. Zajac bent down and carefully scooped Sam into his hands. He looked at Sam from the front and the back, from the bottom and the top. Finally, he put Sam back in the wire circle.
“Well,” he said, “from the outside, Sam looks completely normal, except for being very thin. I can’t tell just by looking if he was born with something wrong inside and I think he’s too weak to take to the university for tests.” Dr. Zajac picked up a tote bag. “I brought some things we can try.” He opened two plastic jars. “Maybe Sam just never had a chance to catch anything so he’s trying to keep from starving by eating plants – though even that seems close to impossible.” He shook both jars out onto the ground in front of Sam. “Little pieces of fish and live earthworms,” he said.
Sam watched the worms crawling in circles. “Hi,” he said, “the humans call me Sam.”
“Snake!” thought the earthworms and hid under the flower leaves.
“He didn’t even try to catch them,” Mom said.
“No, he didn’t,” Dr. Zajac said, “and most garter snakes will show an interest in fish, but he didn’t even look at it.”. He took a long pair of tweezers from his bag, picked up one of the worms and held it in front of Sam’s nose. “Come on, Sam,” he said. “You have to eat.”
Sam turned his head away.
“I think it’s nice that Sam doesn’t want to eat other animals.” Meghan said. “Mom has a friend who doesn’t eat any meat.”
Dr. Zajac put the worm on the ground by Sam and stood up. “Humans can make that choice because their bodies can use either plant or animal food. Some reptiles, like tortoises, eat plants, but snakes can’t. If he doesn’t eat, he will die.” He turned to Mom. “You’re absolutely sure he ate a piece of leaf?”
“Yes. I was watching him while I was on the phone with Dr. Chavez.”
Dr. Zajac used the tweezers to hold a little piece of leaf in front of Sam’s nose. Sam’s tongue flicked out. The tweezers still smelled a little like earthworm, but it was okay. He swallowed the leaf.
“Really amazing!” Dr. Zajac said.” Do you have any frozen peas?”
“Would he be able to eat those?” Mom asked.
“Not like the food he really needs, but I brought some vitamin and mineral powder with me. If we squash it in with the peas, it might do him a little good. I’m hoping to keep him going until I can check with some other experts.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure they’re going to believe me!”
Later that afternoon, Sam was napping again. The soft green plant stuff that Dr. Zajac had given him made him feel full, and that was good, but he was still so weak it was just easier to sleep.
“Snake!” a tiny voice woke him. “Sam Snake!”
“Sam Snake. Sam Snake. Sam Snake snake snake! More tiny voices, all around him.
He looked up. Butterflies. Three, no, four butterflies were fluttering around him. “Hi,” he said. “How do you know my name?”
“The earthworms told us,” the biggest butterfly said. “The ones the doctor human left. They told us that you didn’t try to eat them.”
Sam sighed. Everyone wanted him to do something he just couldn’t do. “That’s right. I don’t eat butterflies either.”
One of the smaller butterflies giggled. “Garter snakes don’t usually eat insects.”
“But we were happy to hear about you. The worms said you eat plants.”
“But everyone tells me I can’t eat plants; that my body can’t use them. The doctor human said I would die if I didn’t eat what other snakes eat.” He let his head sink down to the earth. “I feel so bad, I think he might be right.”
“That’s why we’re here,” another butterfly said. “It seemed like such a wonderful thing that you wanted to eat plants that we decided we wanted to help.”
“How?”
“Magic!” the butterflies all said together.
The biggest butterfly landed in front of him. “You need to change. And butterflies are experts at change magic. Every one of us started as caterpillars. Then we completely changed from those to butterflies.”
“Magic?” Sam asked.
“Magic!” she said. “We checked with the wisest butterflies in the world. They told us that because you’re not a caterpillar, we can’t change you as much as a butterfly changes, but we can change you enough inside that you can use some plants for food.”
“Really? I’ll be able to eat plants and feel good?”
She wiggled her antennae at him. “It’s not quite that simple. Butterfly magic is very powerful, but…”
“I’m not a caterpillar,” he said.
“Right. We can’t give you teeth that will grind up plants. You’ll have to have soft things like the doctor human gave you. Will the humans keep giving you things like that?
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “Can we try the magic anyway and hope they will? They seem really nice.”
The butterflies all flew around him again. “We’ll try!” they said. “Curl up in as tight a circle as you can and put the end of your tail over your eyes. No peeking. Butterfly magic is secret.”
Sam could hear the whoosh of little wings going faster and faster. His insides started to feel warm and wiggly. Then he felt warm and wiggly all over. It was hard to keep the end of his tail over his eyes.
“Done!” said one butterfly voice. “Done, done, done!” said all the rest.
Sam uncurled. “Can I eat plants now?” he asked.
“Do you feel different?”
“I feel…” Sam smiled. “I feel good! My insides don’t hurt!”
“Perfect”! said the biggest butterfly. “Then it worked. Remember, just soft plants. Goodbye, nice snake Sam.”
“Goodbye!” said Sam as they flew away. “Thank you!”
The next afternoon, Dr. Zajac came back with a little machine that could use sound to see what was happening inside Sam. When he was done, he showed Megan and Mom the computer pictures. “He looks like every other baby garter snake, nothing wrong or different. But did you notice the tiny snake droppings over there? It looks like the mashed peas we gave him were digested. It’s really not possible!”
“But it’s good, isn’t it” Megan asked.
“Very good!” Dr. Zajac said, and shook his head. “Just not possible!”
“What should we do now?” Mom asked.
“Well… Keeping a wild-born snake as a pet is usually a bad idea, but if you’re both willing to keep mashing vegetables for him, I think that’s his best chance of living a long, healthy life.”
“We can do it, right, Mom?”
“I don’t know much about snakes,” Mom said, “but I’m willing to try.”
“I can send you a lot of information on snake care,” Dr. Zajac said, “and I’ll work on a special powder to mix with his food. Even though he seems to be able to digest soft plant food, it won’t have everything he needs.”
“Thank you,” Mom said. “I don’t know what Sam would have done without you.
“I’m not sure I did anything. Sam is… Sam is impossible, but there he is! I’ll send you a good diet for him with the other information.”
Mom and Megan said thank you again and Dr. Zajac left, still shaking his head.
Megan knelt next to Sam’s wire circle. Mom let Marshmallow into the yard to visit.
“Mom,” Megan said. “Could I eat just plants like your friend – and like Sam?”
“It’s possible,” Mom said, “but it takes a lot of careful planning. And it might be hard because you’re still growing.”
“But…”
Mom laughed. “That wasn’t a ‘no’. Let’s talk to your pediatrician next time we’re there. She might have ideas. Until then, we can do one day a week without meat. How does that sound?”
“That sounds like a good plan. Thanks, Mom.” She stood and gave Mom a hug. “Can we give Sam more peas now?”
“Let’s do that.”
They went in the house, Marshmallow stayed in the garden.
“Hi,” Marshmallow said. “I’m a dog. I live here.”
“My name’s Sam. I’m a snake. I guess I live here too.”
And that was its own kind of magic.
Loved the book Little Tyke.
So, made a special request to author/artist for a story about a vegetarian snake.
Thank You!
