Slow worm

Slow worm

Yesterday, whilst mowing, I stumbled across this creature. Having never seen one before I thought that it was probably a grass snake and called my boys to have a good look. A little googling later I discovered my mistake, it is a slow worm. Fairly common but rarely sighted. The fact that we found this one indicates that there are probably a lot more around which is good news as they love to eat slugs and snails, the nemeses of gardeners.

The plural of nemesis is nemeses. I would never have got that right without a dictionary!