The answer is to be found neither in the rhyme of the poet nor in the reason of the scientific man.
Musing on these things I suddenly sat up from my quiet seat beneath the rock ferns, for more magic yet was being displayed before my eyes. Over on the further side, in the shallow eddy, the pool was troubled a second, then there rose from it a wee sunfish, not more than three inches long, rose from it tail first and began balancing across the pool surface toward me, on his head. His tail quivered in the air, and I could see his freckles growing in the yellow transparency of his skin, yet, though I watched with wide eyes, he was two-thirds the way across the pool toward me before I noticed beneath him the tip of the nose and the wicked little dark eye of a water snake. At sight of him the demoiselles should have shrieked and flown away, but they made no move. I, however, indignant, arose, and seizing broken fragments of rock was about to lacerate him and loose his prey when I quite suddenly thought better of it. Had not I a few days before come down stream to the deep pool above and carried off a string of perch, sunfish, pouts, and an eel? Had not the water snake also a right to his dinner?
I dropped my rock fragments, but there was no longer pleasure in waiting to woo the demure coquetry of the demoiselles. The serpent had entered Eden and the man was driven forth. I lingered only long enough to see the grace and strength of the snake as he glided over the sill of the old dam, now black and sinuous, now giving me a glimpse of the vivid red of the under parts of his body, but always keeping his grip secure on the little sunfish whom he was taking away to luncheon with him.
I climbed out of the glen, glad to go for once, but at the top of the rock where the sunburnt pasture path begins again I was in for another shudder, for here the dragon had entered fairy land. He came, writhing his horrid length along the path, his scales shining in the sun, his great mouth gaping, and up near his abnormally great head two little impotent forelegs wriggling. Who wouldn’t turn and run before such a creature as this? To be sure he was scarce three feet long, and his curiously mottled-brown back was that of the common adder, one of our harmless snakes, though he looks ugly enough to be stuffed with venom. But this great gaping head and the wriggling forelegs; never did flat-head adder have such a front as this!