A Snake and a Lost Wallet

I'm not sure that I can say that today has been quite what I had hoped for.   I decided that as dinner monitor I would go and get lots of shopping from the nearest supermarket in Poggibonsi 40 k away so that we didn't have to worry about shopping until next week.  On the way back to The Villa I decided to remove the grime from the car and let the world know that it's black again. The petrol station was entirely credit card run with no human presence.  This turned out to be a Good Thing because I had to use my credit card before I could fill the tank.  I had no credit card.  Argh.  I had paid cash for the groceries.  Was my wallet at the store or at The Villa?  Drove home.  Drove back to the store.  Wallet there.  Grazie.  Normale. 

160k later and it was 1730 and wine time.  Then out to the pizzeria for dinner.  Good meal.  Happy service.

The highlight of the day for me was arriving home for the first time to hear a commotion because there was a snake on the patio.  Camera at the ready I approached it.  I got too near and this 30cm or so bundle of fun took a severe dislike to my attentions and became distinctly hostile.  Needless to say he held the upper hand and I kept my distance.   Since then we have been trying to identify it.  Wiki has a list of Italian snakes but it doesn't seem remotely like one on the list.  Its head is very distinctive.  Someone must know what it is.  Any ideas?

Brief Encounter

Well today has been my first and very brief encounter with a large and very real live snake.  So far as I can tell from the photographs of grass snakes and vipers it was a viper.   Not that that's unusual hereabouts.

I was walking round the house to investigate a calling buzzard when I nearly trod on it.  The speed with which it's 2 ft or so moved was abslutely astonishing.  I had absolutely no idea that snakes could move so fast.  The fact that I was wearing jandles was rather sobering.  Had my foot been 4 or more inches to the left I would have trodden on it and it might well have taken that very badly indeed.

I now appears to be holed up in a hole in the wall of the house right near the fosse septique.  I am not going to investigate however much I might like a photo and be able positively to identify it.