Viper!

We had a scary nature lessons this morning. First I'll backtrack to say that just last week a dedushka scared our children with stories of dangerous snakes in the grass. After that, I went and looked up venomous snakes for this area. So, that was last week. Now jump up to today.

This morning we went swimming. The water has turned to its summer color of GREEN, not just green, but opaque, pea-soup GREEN. We were all in the water near the shore, when a snake head popped up right near us. I thought it looked like what I had just recently researched, so right away I told Jaan not to grab it. It swam around us, disappearing and reappearing in the green water.  Now, I like snakes, but I found that rather disconcerting.  It tried to hide up against a piece of concrete at the water's edge, but every time a wave washed away we got a great, clear view of it.  I wish I had taken the camera this morning!

When we got home, and everyone settled in for naps, I looked up the snake links again.  Sure enough, our snake was a European viper or adder/гадюка!  I got Jaan and Raia back out of bed to come look at the photos.  They were particularly impressed with the one to the right here.  They promised to stay away from anything that looks like that.  Although, Jaan's first question afterwards was, "But I can catch any other snake, can't I?"



(The photos are from the article that I linked to above.)