I’ll try not to get too tree-huggery here, but one of the nice things about regularly riding a bike to work is that it helps you stay a bit in tune with nature.

It goes beyond the seasons and the movement of the stars — big-picture, cosmological or worldly stuff — into more subtle events, like the season of the flying cottonwood “cotton,” the emergence of the first lightning bugs of the year, the heady fragrance of honeysuckle in bloom.

When I see more deer in our residential neighborhood, I figure it’s rutting season. When I notice more roadkill, I know the turkey vultures have migrated south to warmer climes. When I see more nearly naked coeds, I can assume it’s Spring Break. When I see hordes of drunken college kids, I know it’s St. Patrick’s Day, or New Year’s Eve, or Thanksgiving, or Easter, or …

Lately — and I have no reasonable explanation for it — I’ve seen a lot of snakes.

I don’t like snakes.

No offense, if you own one, are one or are married to one.

The streets of Lawrence, it seems, are crawling with ’em.

The other night, no more than three blocks from my house, I saw what I thought was a piece of crack-fill on the road ahead of me. Imagine my surprise when I approached it, with a car to my left, and saw the crack-fill slithering mere inches from my wheel. And it wasn’t an innocuous garter snake, either.

I don’t know my snakes, but I swear — and I hope I don’t send the ‘hood into a tizzy — it looked like a copperhead. Or maybe a Gaboon viper.

There was a massive dead one on Fourth Street, not far from the hospital. It had been run over and sun-bleached for days. Unfortunately, somebody (or something) made off with it. I was hoping to turn it into shoes. Or maybe a nice belt.

There was another road-kill snake on Kentucky, by the train park.

There’s still a roadstain from one on Second by the Holidome, another on Lawrence Ave. not far from Holcom.

Normally, I don’t catalog every carcass on my commute, but the proliferation of dead snakes has me … intrigued, if nothing else.

I figure something’s up.

When we saw more foxes in the ‘hood awhile back, we attributed it to disrupted habitat. There was construction nearby, and we figured the foxes had been forced from their homes.

I’m no herpetologist, but I reckon something is forcing snakes under spinning Michelins in all corners of our fair city. Rain water in their creepy, scaly little snakeholes? Bad economy?

Who knows, but I’ll sure keep my eye open. Wouldn’t want to get bit by one of the scaly beasties, especially if it was a Gaboon viper.