This morning, I innocently went out back to hang up our laundry on the line. While I was busy with my clothes pins, there a scuffling commotion and a loud thump and a big SNAKE fell from the roof of the house -- the house that I myself live in -- and landed on the paving stones at my feet. It did not bite me because it was locked in mortal combat with a big lizard that it was trying to consume head first. The lizard was having none of it and the two of them thrashed around underneath the clothesline -- the lizard half in and half out of the snake and the snake whipping its tail/body around in a frenzy. The lizard was using its tail and back feet (the only non-ingested parts of it visible) to fight off the snake. I have no idea what the ingested parts of it were doing.
I screamed, but Jonathan didn't hear me. I had to run inside and call him to come out and save me, but by the time we got back, the snake and the lizard had both vanished.
"I wish I got to see as much wildlife as you do," Jonathan said, while sort of poking at the wood pile that is just there in a attempt to flush them out.
I wish Jonathan got to see MORE wildlife than I do -- perhaps all of it, in fact. I would be content to hear the stories after the fact. Although I guess that the news that the roof of the house where you sleep (ha!) at night is infested with snakes is not particularly any more comforting for being second-hand.
Our friend Luciana who lives across the street tells us that she hit a wild boar with her car on the lovely Via Capriglia the other night. She says it sounded like an explosion. Fortunately, her car has "pedestrian air bags" that deploy outside the car when you hit someone. This seems like a very good idea to me and I'm surprised it has taken this long to come into common practice. The boar seems to have gone off uninjured and will live to be eaten later in the fall.
And the first wild porcini mushrooms showed up in the market this morning. How they managed to grow is a miracle given the searing heat and complete absence of rain for weeks on end. But they were there and I bought them and later today they will be sauteed in rosemary-infused olive oil and then eaten. They would go nicely with some roasted boar, but at the moment, all I have is the possibility of roasted viper.
