In winter they
hibernated there, tangled together in a cluster no doubt; and in
summer nights when they were at home, coiled at their ease or gliding
ghost-like about their subterranean apartments, I would lie awake and
listen to them by the hour. For although it may be news to some closet
ophiologists, serpents are not all so mute as we think them. At all
events this kind, the _Philodryas aestivus_--a beautiful and harmless
colubrine snake, two and a half to three feet long, marked all over
with inky black on a vivid green ground--not only emitted a sound when
lying undisturbed in his den, but several individuals would hold a
conversation together which seemed endless, for I generally fell
asleep before it finished. A hissing conversation it is true, but
not unmodulated or without considerable variety in it; a long
sibilation would be followed by distinctly-heard ticking sounds, as of
a husky-ticking clock, and after ten or twenty or thirty ticks another
hiss, like a long expiring sigh, sometimes with a tremble in it as of
a dry leaf swiftly vibrating in the wind. No sooner would one cease
than another would begin; and so it would go on, demand and response,
strophe and antistrope; and at intervals several voices would unite in
a kind of low mysterious chorus, death-watch and flutter and hiss;
while I, lying awake in my bed, listened and trembled.
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