To brumate, perchance to dream. The winter is long up here on the edge of the Arctic Circle and the only way to survive is a nine-month sleep. We reptiles don’t hibernate: that’s a vulgar mammalian habit. No: we go in for brumation – a sleep as profound as our nature. Spring and summer are but dreams. Rather pleasant ones, as it happens.
We might bite humans but only if they do something outrageous like pick us up
We might bite humans but only if they do something outrageous like pick us up
Monday
Or maybe Tuesday, or maybe the first Sunday after Epiphany: what’s the difference? In my hideaway, time and place have little meaning: all that matters is sleep, the promise of the distant spring and the unreliable memories of the old one. What times they were – those dozen weeks of action between one sleep and another.
Tuesday
I’m not poisonous. I’m venomous. How all those species get by without venom in their bite is beyond me. Even in my sleep, I remember the intensity of the stalk. We adders have two speeds: slow and light. I remember a vole, pattering about in the scatty way that voles have, and sliding up to him as slow as grass growing. And then the strike – but you’ve already missed it. Want to see it again?
Wednesday
Humans are pretty scarce up here, and hurrah for that, because they always interfere. There are times when adders in busier parts of the world envy the power of black mambas and kraits, which can kill a human with a single bite. We might bite humans and cause a certain amount of dismay, but only if they do something outrageous like pick us up. I bit a dog once, after he thrust his great hairy face at me and sniffed. Take that! Wouldn’t have killed him, more’s the pity, but I don’t suppose he’ll do it again.
Thursday
Related articles:
Memories come snaking into my dreams. Spring, as the long Arctic days begin to stretch, a rare warmth in the sun filling my body with power – it was almost as if had wings. I could have taken on the world that day: and I certainly took on another adder. At 3ft, he was a little longer than me, but not as tundra savvy. We wound together in a tight spiral and stood high and proud: a slithering twisting embrace that was all about domination, not love. I out-wrestled him and I downed him and off he went.
Friday
Newsletters
Choose the newsletters you want to receive
View more
For information about how The Observer protects your data, read our Privacy Policy
Leaving me to my prize and my joy. There she was, in delicate shades of coffee, as sleek a slitherer as you could ever wish to see. We performed the serpentine tango, a side-by-side dance in which we advanced in a series of beautifully coordinated lateral undulations to a secluded spot and there we did the great deed. I might leap awake at the thought of it if spring wasn’t still so far away.
Saturday
Or whatever. There’ll be a time when days matter again, but right now the endless night is everything: that and my dreams of venom and movement and combat and love. Little stirs during the long brumation, but in the depths of my slowly, almost reluctantly beating heart, I know that spring will come.
Adder (vipera berus) CV
Lifespan Maybe 10 years
Eating habits The unsuspecting
Hobbies Subtlety
Sexual preferences A hint of café au lait
Photograph by Getty