Answer: C) Past.
Explanation: The tense of a verb shows the time when an action or condition occurred. There are three basic tenses: past, present, and future. They show whether a simple action or condition occurred, occurs, or will occur in the past, present, or future. The given passage uses past tense (corresponding to option C), as we can see in the conjugation of the verbs ("saw," "coiled," and "wriggled").