“Like it?” said the grass-snake. “Of course I do. I should be very sorry to be anything else. Yes, we snakes have a happy life. In summer we crawl about and eat frogs, and in winter we find some nice place to go to sleep in.”
“Then do you sleep all the winter?” said Tommy Smith.
“Of course,” said the grass-snake. “What else is there to do? There are no frogs in winter, and it is cold and unpleasant. The best thing is to go to sleep, and that is what I always do.”
Now whilst Tommy Smith was talking to the grass-snake he kept looking at the poor dead frogs that were lying on the grass, and you can think how surprised he was when, all at once, one of them moved a little, and then began to crawl away very slowly. Then the others moved, and began to crawl away too. So they were not dead after all. You see, when a snake eats a frog (or anything else), he does not chew it, as we do, but just swallows it whole, and then sometimes the frog will keep alive for some time inside the snake’s stomach. Tommy Smith spoke to the frogs, but they were too faint to answer. So he took them up, and washed them in a little ditch which was close by, and then laid them in a nice long tuft of grass. When he had done that, he came back to where he had left the grass-snake, but he did not find him there again. “Where are you?” he called out. “Do you mean me?” said a voice quite near him. It was a hissing voice, certainly, and sounded a good deal like the grass-snake’s. But still it did not sound quite the same, Tommy Smith thought. So he said, “I mean you, if you are the grass-snake,” in rather a doubtful tone of voice. “No, indeed,” hissed the voice again, “I am something better than a grass-snake. I am an adder.” And as the adder said this, he came crawling out from a little clump of furze-bush, where he had lain hidden.
Tommy Smith saw that what the grass-snake had said was true, for the adder’s body was shorter and of a duller colour than the grass-snake’s. His head, too, was different. It was flatter, and swelled out more on each side where it joined the neck, so that the neck looked smaller in proportion to the size of the head. Altogether, Tommy Smith felt sure that the next time he went out for a walk and saw a snake, he would be able to tell whether it was a grass-snake or an adder. “And if it is an adder,” he said to himself, “why, I ought to kill it.” And then he said out loud, “Mr. Adder, you don’t seem at all afraid of me; but, do you know, I think I ought to kill you, because you are poisonous.”
“I think you ought to leave me alone because I am poisonous,” said the adder. “For if you were to try to kill me, I should have to bite you, and then, perhaps, I should kill you.”
Tommy Smith did not like this remark of the adder’s at all. He began to feel afraid himself, and he would have liked to have run away. But he thought that if he did, the adder might attack him when his back was turned. So he stood quite still, and only said, “Why aren’t you harmless like the grass-snake?”
“That is not a very polite question!” said the adder in reply. “I belong to the poisonous branch of the family, and I am proud to belong to it. The grass-snake is a poor creature, and I pity him. I should like to see anyone catch me in the same way that they catch him. I would soon teach them the difference between us.”
“But you do so much harm,” said Tommy Smith.
“What harm have I ever done you?” said the adder.