Image used under Creative Commons

A couple years ago Ellie started talking to Snake. She would have great (one-sided) conversations with her imaginary friend and would tell us what he was doing. We were curious where this suddenly came from. I was worried she had befriended some snake-tattooed person or something. We now think that it is based off the Disney snake character, Hiss, from the animal Robin Hood movie.

As Ellie talked more and more about Snake…

we learned that he isn’t any ordinary snake, not that we expected him to be…

Snake apparently has two feet and two hands. When I tried to point out that snakes don’t have hands or feet, Ellie explained that he is the only one. Snake is starting to sound more like Trogdor, although she assures me he has no wings and does not shoot fire.

Trogdor, the Burninator from Homestarrunner.com

Snake has been with us for well over a year now, and we still learn new things about him through Ellie’s stories. For example, if we tell Ellie not to jump on a chair, she might start a new story by saying, “Once, when Snake was jumping on a chair, he…”

Ellie talked about Snake so much that Adelaine started talking about him too. Adelaine, of course, likes to do whatever Ellie does, so shortly after Adelaine turned two and was still barely able to put a sentence together she started doing things like laughing and saying, “No, Snake, no,” over and over. This of course made Ellie angry that Adelaine was apparently talking to her imaginary friend.

Now that Ellie is drawing a lot more, I finally asked her to draw a picture of Snake for me. So here he is, straight from Ellie’s imagination:

As you can see, Snake is purple with arms and legs. He can also drive a car, fly a airplane and a spaceship, and many other funny things.

Snake is no longer alone now as a new cohort of “friends” has been added. Frank was the next one to come along. Apparently, Frank is a red tractor. It wasn’t until months later that I put it together that the inspiration for Frank likely came from the Pixar movie Cars.

Frank’s gonna get you by ~Splapp-me-do on deviantART

Other friends include Door and Lily, who seem to be human, possibly brother and sister. We expect many more friends in the years to come from this girl’s very active imagination.