Watch out for snakes. They steal mothers milk, you know...

I ran over a snake last week; it ruined my day. “It’s good to run over snakes,” said my neighbours, unable to comprehend my distress.

Spaniards kill snakes. It doesn’t matter what sort of snake it is, and nor are they dissuaded by the fact that only one of the snakes in the Iberian Peninsula, the viper, is venomous — and not very venomous at that. You’d have to be either very young or very old, and pretty much on the verge of death anyway, to die from a viper’s bite.

Curiously enough the Spanish for snake is feminine – la serpiente – whereas most of the indicators would suggest masculinity.

There is, for a start, an undeniably phallic look to a snake. But feminine they are, and every Spaniard who can will happily run them over or chop them in half with his mattock.

I think that the femininity of serpents, and the irrational fear and loathing of them is not entirely unrelated to the claptrap dealt out by the Church.

This anathema driven by ignorance extends even to the poor inoffensive toad. My neighbour’s mother, Expira, for example, would pour boiling water on any toad that was unfortunate enough to cross her path. “They’re vile creatures,” she’d say. “They’ll spit in your eye and blind you.”

Now this is absolutely not true, but you can’t convince country people to change a lifetime’s habit and superstition.

It’s well known too, apparently, that snakes will steal the milk of goats and cows; they will wind themselves around the back leg of a cow to get at the udders, and as a general rule the cow doesn’t mind, for snakes are the subtlest of suckers. And this, in rare cases, may even extend to humans. Juan Barquero, who drives a long distance truck, and is thus somebody you might expect to have escaped the superstition and sloppy thinking that festers on in the remoter parts of the land, told me the following story.

“There was a couple livng out on the hill and they had a very sickly baby. That baby just would not grow, although its mother was brimming with milk. To add to its woes the poor wee mite had horrible spots all round its mouth. So, in despair, they went to see a doctor.

“Now this doctor was one of the good ones and divined immediately where their problem lay. He told them to go home and investigate the cane and beam ceiling above their bed; there they would find a fat snake.

“The snake was feeding on the mother’s milk. At night it would slither down from the ceiling while the baby was feeding; it would slip its tail into the baby’s mouth to keep it quiet, and then drink the milk from the mother’s breast.

“The couple returned home, found the snake and killed it, and from that day on their baby began to thrive and all the spots around its mouth disappeared.

“Now that story is as true as I stand here,” said Juan, “and if you don’t believe me I can prove it to you. Do you see that small farm just to the right of the poplars on the hill over there? Well that’s where it happened.”

And he drew on his cigarette and nodded his head with the finality of a point well proven.

Of course it didn’t prove the point at all, and besides, I had heard the story a dozen times before, and even read it in a book, because it’s one of those universal rural myths.

Of course I pretended to believe him; I hate to spoil a good story.

Things are changing though; with more mobility and a little more literacy the old clouds of ignorance are blowing away. This is also due in no small measure to the presence of new blood amongst the benighted bucolic population.

Andrew is an Englishman and a gifted and passionate naturalist; he knows the score with snakes and toads. I told him about the episode with the snake, and how awful I felt for having run it over.

He looked, if anything, even more despondent than me, as if some untoward event had ruined his day too.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I ran over a rat,” he said.

'Driving Over Lemons’ by Chris Stewart, and his El Valero titles are available on Kindle (£4.11) and other ebook formats, and in bookshops (£7.99). For more information, visit www.drivingoverlemons.co.uk

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