Out there gardening, on the terraces, as you do in autumn. Gathering dead leaves, chopping, tidying, gathering all the clippings into one pile. Go away, do something else, return to the pile of clippings to clear away. And something wriggled…

A snake, a baby Montpellier snake to be exact. Very wriggly, very frightened, I don’t know who was the most frightened…

Montpellier snakes can be up to 2m but this baby was only about 1 foot long.

For more information about Montpellier snakes, click here for the excellent Arkive website or here for the Iberian Nature website.

5 to remember
cortando/a – chopping
limpiando/a – tidying
los recortes – the clippings
escurridizo/a – wriggly
exacto/a – exact