One sum­mer when we were young, I caught a small
sna­ke. I car­ri­ed it around in a clear pla­s­tic con­tai­ner
whe­re I had pla­ced some stones and a few fern
lea­ves. When I ope­ned the con­tai­ner to show Mat­te
the sna­ke, he prompt­ly rea­ched his hand in, grabbed

the sna­ke and ran away. But he had­n’t gone fur­ther
than a few meters when he gave a pani­cked scream.
The sna­ke had bro­ken in the midd­le. The front part
with the head dis­ap­peared under the house and the
back part stay­ed wri­thing in a small bloo­dy pool in
my big brother’s palm. Repul­sed, he tos­sed it aside.

I later lear­ned that it had­n’t been a sna­ke at all but a
slow­worm, a crea­tu­re that lacks legs and that has the
abili­ty to shed its tail. It is a defen­se mecha­nism. It is
cal­led auto­to­my. The slow­worm could­n’t compete

with my brother’s intel­li­gence or strength but it
could save its life by doing some­thing com­ple­te­ly
unex­pec­ted and unthinkable: per­form an act of vio-
lence against its­elf and muti­la­te its own body.
That was how it mana­ged to escape.

https://​www​.simons​ta​len​hag​.se/​l​a​b​y​r​i​n​t​h​.​h​tml

https://​www​.tumb​lr​.com/​s​t​a​l​e​n​hag