“There is a snake in the pond,” Nancy informs me.

I watched for a while before noticing a different kind of stirring of the water. Then, the head appeared. Alert. Curious. Tongue seeking clues on the wind.

It’s a garter snake. We watched it slide out of the water, more than two linear feet of it before the tail finally emerged. It hid under a nearby fern, then later was back in the pond.

We have noticed no frog-sized lumps in its sleek length, so speculate that it  feeds on eggs and small larvae as it hoovers along the edges of the pond, in and out of the gaps between stones.