My brother loved snakes. My mother was terrified of them. I guess I could have gone either way, but because my brother caught snakes and let me hold them when I was – I don’t know, maybe five years old? I was not afraid of them.

As an adult, I am extremely cautious with snakes because I have never learned to properly identify the venomous ones. There are lots of “tips” to identify them, but also exceptions to each one, so I just don’t pick up snakes unless I’ve got an expert with me. I’ve learned over the years how important snakes and other reptiles are to the balance of nature, and I’m trying to find ways to keep our city lawn wildlife-friendly.

In my novel, Eliana-Who-Sees-Us (which I just sent back to the editor last night), Eliana sees demons clinging to people – whispering to them or otherwise trying to influence their behavior. The demons look like reptiles or frogs to her (okay, yes, frogs are amphibians). They usually look like “weird lizards” or have a froglike mouth, and there is one with a dragonlike body. That last one originally had a “humanish head,” but I decided that was too creepy so I changed it.

I don’t want people to think that reptiles are evil though. So here are a couple photos of me from this past weekend, interacting with nature’s reptilian side. The big gator sighting was a funny story — he was lying next to the path and we debated whether we should get that close, but we needed to go down that trail. I was not happy about it, and was last in line. He started moving before I got across, so I just turned and walked the other way. He simply crossed the path and went into the water.