I’m eleven and we’ve recently moved to a new house. It’s a farmhouse, but we don’t own the farm, just the house.

I wander and explore until I wander off our property. I pass a barn and some other buildings, and then I see it: a big patch of long grass.

The grass reminds me of the opening theme of Little House on the Prairie where the girls are running through a meadow, their wholesome sun bonnets bouncing lazily behind them. I can hear the theme song as I look at it. I want to run through that grass.

I suppose that this is a good place in the story to tell you that I’m wearing flip-flops.

After checking to make sure that nobody is watching, I dive into the grass and run through it while bringing my knees up high. My arms are out to the sides, palms dancing forward. The theme song from Little House on the Prairie plays through my head blissfully and clearly.

My joyfulness is cut short when I feel a thick, long, legless body covered in scales brush roughly and quickly against my ankle and out of my way. I know exactly what it is, and neither of us is happy in that moment.

The Ingalls girls probably never felt the snakes rubbing against their ankles when they ran through the meadow. They were wearing leather boots and thick woollen stockings. (The girls, I mean. Not the snakes.)