I witnessed an act of petty cruelty today that has left me rather shaken.
I was at Jay Cooke State Park, walking down to the swinging bridge to get my weekly photo, when I saw two teenage girls watching the tiniest snake I’ve ever seen sunning itself on the sidewalk. From where I was, about 10-15 feet away, it looked like an earthworm. Suddenly, a woman returning from the bridge walked right up to the girls, looked down, and deliberately stomped on the baby snake. I looked right into her face and noticed three things: she had dark hair, she was wearing a black sundress, and she was grinning as she walked away.
"Oh, I think she might’ve just killed it!" one of the teenagers exclaimed in dismay.
"Is it a snake?" I asked when I reached them a couple of seconds later. The proportions were all wrong for an earthworm. Far too slender and quick-moving to be a worm.
"Yes," the girl answered as she walked slowly away.
The snake, which was no more than 4" long and maybe 1/4" wide, didn't appear badly damaged. I didn't see any blood, but it flipped momentarily onto its back, exposing its red belly, which is not the behavior of a healthy snake. I spent a few moments moving the snake off the sidewalk - it was so tiny I couldn't get ahold of it on the cement, so I scooted it off the sidewalk and into the grass where I was finally able to pick it up and place it in the shade, where it could either recover or die unmolested.
That woman's actions harmed and probably painfully killed a tiny harmless snake (her behavior may well have been illegal, too - killing wildlife in a state park?), but horrified three other people who aren't going to forget her vicious act.
I will be honest: I wanted to assault that woman. And call her obscene names. But I did neither because I was just frozen.
