I was tidying the garden this morning and came upon a snake. I had never seen the behavior before, but it makes sense - it was holding still, with most of its body a couple of inches off the ground - given the cool cloudy day, I don't think there were any basking spots, and it was so cold that it made no attempt to evade being picked up.

I went to show the kids, and it coiled, ever so slowly, into a tight ball in my hand, and it took several minutes for us to warm it enough that it started to move around. George (who is holding it in the pictures) was fascinated. Denton, who has a longer history of being excited by snakes, came and took a look, but wasn't interested in holding it.

[Edited to add: that's quite the color calibration problem that I seem to be having - it looks better in gimp than in firefox to me, and I don't think I'm going to solve this easily tonight.]