Welcoming Committee

“Welcome to the country,” my closest neighbor Mr. Cooley said as a silver dollar-sized piece of skin on my left hand sizzled on the exhaust of the lawn mower he was trying to convince me to buy. Prior to this sales pitch, he pointed out how important it was to keep the property mowed.
Another neighbor pulled up our dirt driveway on his Harley Davidson, complete with saddle bags, the modern cowboy.
“If you don’t mow you’ll have to worry about these,” he warned as he pulled a quart-sized mason jar from his brown leather saddle bag and handed it to me. Coiled at the bottom of the transparent trap was the golden body of a young copperhead snake whose head was perched high and eyes were following every movement that surrounded him. “I keep a few of these in my freezer.”
From the front porch I watch as the yellow finches land on the seed heads of waist-high grass and balance themselves in the sway of their weight and the wind. They peck at the grass between their feet like a hungry farmer at a warm ear of corn. At dusk the pale grass comes alive with the flashing of a civilization of fireflies.