Snake paradise

"I like snakes." No matter how many times I say it to myself, I can never really believe it. Countryside Japan is filled with snakes. It rains here a lot in early summer, so the grass grows faster than you can cut it, which makes lots of nice places for a snake to hide in.  And there are thousands of frogs, I can hear them singing in a wonderful chorus as I write this, so there's no shortage of food for a snake. Japan is a snake paradise. Which is good, because that means they don't come looking for food, they've got all they could want.

But a lot of them get squished because they lie on the road baking in the sun. When I came across this one early in the morning, I thought, Oh, here's another dead snake, and I gave it a prod with my shoe...and it moved. It stuck out its tongue, and shook its tail and then it tried to bite my shoe. Thankfully it wasn't a big snake. Only about 70cm long and no thicker than a banana without the peel. But it certainly was aggressive. I think this one was a juvenile Japanese striped snake, but correct me if I'm wrong. So this one isn't poisonous, but there are others that are. Hopefully I can get a nice photo of them without one of us being dead...