Too close for comfort

Reminder to self: beware what you blog about.  A couple of days ago I posted that I expected to see the first grass snake of the year soon. Over breakfast I read in our local paper of a lurcher bitten by an adder. Just now I got a call to a domestic crisis: Izzy the big dog had a large snake cornered outside our French windows and was barking furiously. Big dog's predecessor lost her bark after an adder bit her. Luckily this one turned out to be a fat grass snake, but worryingly it disappeared into the undergrowth - will probably reappear just at the wrong moment.