Serpike

It lies coiled in tall grass or half-submerged at a water's edge, utterly still for hours, until something warm passes within reach, and then the strike and the coil arrive together, too fast to separate. It kills by constriction, tightening a fraction with each of the prey's own breaths, patient as a tide. In cool weather several will den together in a knot beneath a warm bank, a tangle that unravels reluctantly at dawn, and a farmer who finds one under his woodpile learns to knock before he reaches.