Rabbits and Snakes

So, now that Spring has sprung (or so I assume – it’s hard to tell around the rain) I am getting a better idea of how my yard works.

We have a ridiculous amount of wildlife.  Foxes, coyotes, raccoons, birds (and spiders and centipedes and the largest earthworm I have ever seen, all of which I hope the birds are eating), but what I have the most of are rabbits and snakes.

Every morning, when I go out to get the newspaper, there’s a rabbit in my front yard eating some part of my foliage.  “Fred,” I say, because there are multiple rabbits but I have named them all Fred, “you’d better not be eating my grass seed.”  (And then, if I suspect he is, in fact, eating my grass seed, I will go and deal with it.  Grass seed is a precious commodity.)

I have seen four snakes since Saturday.  (Or two snakes twice.  Anyway.)  So far they have all been garter snakes which is good news, because I never notice them until I’m practically on top of them and they have to slither away for their own safety.

Kit, you ask, what does this have to do with writing?  Well, Squiders, I will tell you.

Rabbits are like story premises.  They’re cute, they’re everywhere, they will invariably eat everything in your garden, but they’re kind of useless.  A story premise looks nice, but it won’t get you very far.

Snakes are like plot.  They’re there, but sometimes you don’t know it until you almost step on them.  Plot burrows through the entire story, intricately twisted around all the other elements.

I could go on all day (characters are like birds – nice to look at but chirp incessantly) but I will spare you.

(There is a baby Fred that lives under the back deck.  He is the most adorable thing ever but I suspect he’s the one eating my spinach.)