"Silence slithered back and forth between the line" is from Trent Zelazny's soon-to-be published novel Unknown Destination. He's a terrific writer, like his father but different. I couldn't get his book, or his slithery line out of my mind last night because we were having another one of those storms that makes living in Bokeelia interesting. The slithering started at midday.

I saw a black racer weaving its way between the palm trunks, picked it up and let it slide through my fingers. In the olden days here on the Gulf when farmers wanted rain, they killed a snake and hung it in a tree. We are still in a drought, the weather experts say. I let the shiny black racer slither back and forth between my fingers for a moment or two and then released it. Walking into the house, I looked to my left -- another black racer! The second snake was lying straight as a black marking pen on a palmetto trunk. I could've sworn it was smiling at me. But snakes do that anyway -- smile, I mean. Cats do too. Both permanent smilers. I smiled back at the racer.

What did the serpent smile mean?

Heavens, it meant rain. And it wasn't long before the scowling skies dropped some heavy leaden drops. All through the night our Great Dane Zora, a Katrina survivor, moaned and trembled over the lightning which lit up the entire night white as a Russian steppe. I trembled too -- once -- as a thunderblast rattled every door and window in the house. I swear, hurricanes are not as bad as these great Midgard thunderstorms that sit over your house for hours on end spitting lightning through forked tongues. Midgard, remember, is the Norse deity that encircles the earth and is, well, you guessed it, a big snake. Big snake indeed.

Zora starts knocking books off shelves when it thunders. She tries to crawl into the two foot space between the fridge and the kitchen counter. This is not an impossible task for a Great Dane because they are double-jointed. One of our large Great Danes, Zeb (we like Z words) squeezed, or rather, slithered (thanks, Trent) through a cracked truck window once, without breaking it and with no injury to himself. I am talking about maybe a foot-and-a-half space.

Zora is happiest during a storm when Lorry and I are sitting on the couch in front of the TV. She noses the set until we turn on the Sirius music station and find some contrapuntal music by Bach. If Bach's not available, she'll listen to Scarlatti. While the harpsichord is running up and down invisible stairs, Zora backs up and parks her huge butt on my lap. Then you're supposed to do the "Tellington T Touch." That's Linda Tellington Jones's almost-sleep-inducing, hypnotic style of doggy backrub, or horsy, or froggy -- hey, it works on anything that's alive. Look her up, Linda's an amazing lady, a whisperer. Met her once in New Mexico and she showed me the T Touch and I've been doing it ever since. It works on Zora.

Oh, I forgot to mention, Lorry gave Zora six Stress Tabs, too. All natural ingredients like carrot powder, ascorbic acid, beef liver, citrus bioflavanoid complex, heperidin, ginseng and vitamin P. (What's vitamin P?) Mystic stuff that works, that calms this doggy down.

In a few minutes, Zora, the trembler, stopped trembling. My left foot fell asleep. As well as my left thigh. Have you ever had a 150 pound Great Dane put all of her weight on your foot and thigh?

I limped back to bed at 3 AM. Zora was already on our bed, head on pillow, asleep.

And that's the last time I smile at a snake on a cloudy day.