This Is a Tiny Fragile Snake

A concluding note tells readers that the 15 poems in This Is a Tiny Fragile Snake were inspired by the poet’s personal encounters with a variety of animals and insects. The contents of Ruddock’s rhyming poems, which range in length from 4-16 lines, reveal brief, but generally positive, moments of incidental contact between humans and a variety of creatures with which we share this world.

The titles of the 15 poems point to each poem’s subject matter. In the opening, title poem, the narrator removes a very young “garter” snake from the lawn and releases it in the nearby woods where it will be safe from being stepped upon. In “Ants”, when the insects overrun a family picnic, a solution is found in providing the ants with their own picnic setting. “Chipmunk” finds the tiny rodent trapped in the base of downspout by a tail-twitching cat. A broom gently removes the cat while peanut butter entices the chipmunk to safety. An unsolicited visit by a skunk in the poem titled “Skunk” causes the narrator to consider the incident from the perspective of this member of the weasel family and what the skunk might think of our odors. A hummingbird, its long, needle-like beak caught in a window or door screen, gets freed by a gentle finger nudge. Both “Bear” and “Moose” find humans in the animals’ territory, but each encounter ends benignly with just an encounter story being left to tell. Canoeing provides the opportunity to appreciate the gracefulness of a brace of flying herons. A persistent red squirrel wins the battle against the nylon door screen that prevents it from accessing the dog’s bowl of kibble. During lawnmowing, the narrator rescues a caterpillar and places it in a tree, “and a week ago a butterfly/came by and danced for me.” A young finch also needs rescuing when it mistakenly crashes into a reflective window and, stunned, falls to the ground where, unattended, it could become prey. The onset of fall finds a swarm of hornets responding to the availability of pitchers of lemonade and invading a balcony, an event that forces a mother and son to wisely retreat inside. As the apple trees shed their ripe fruit, wasps and worms (See Excerpt) avail themselves of the windfall. In late November, a loon that has delayed its migration a bit too long perhaps, finds itself trapped in newly formed ice and requires human assistance in being released. Finally, a Santa-like raccoon accidentally enters a house via the chimney and frantically races around before exhausting itself to the point where it can be safely bundled up and released “to her familiar raccoon world”.

This Is a Tiny Fragile Snake actually has a sixteenth poem, 26 lines long and titled “Winter”. In it, Ruddock revisits each of the creatures readers met in his earlier poems, and he addresses their current whereabouts. For example:

the ants have snuggled up for warmth,
the ants are in a ball,
squirrel digs for acorns
that she planted in the fall,

And the title’s tiny fragile snake? Well, it’s wintering over by curling up in a nest of moss as can be seen in Ashley Barron’s closing wordless illustration. Barron’s cut-paper collage illustrations, all two-page spreads, are simply outstanding. Though Ruddock’s text uses “I” and “we”, Barron’s illustrations reveal that the speaker is not always the same person and that the book’s characters are racially diverse.

This Is a Tiny Fragile Snake, a visual treat, carries a powerful message of harmony.