Eve and the Serpent

Does the statement that a serpent spoke to Eve require that the account be allegorical?
Gen. 3:1-4: “Now the serpent proved to be the most cautious of all the wild beasts of the field that Jehovah God had made. So it began to say to the woman: ‘Is it really so that God said you must not eat from every tree of the garden?’ At this the woman said to the serpent: ‘ . . . God has said, “You must not eat from it, no, you must not touch it that you do not die.”’ At this the serpent said to the woman: ‘You positively will not die.’”
John 8:44: “[Jesus said:] The Devil . . . is a liar and the father of the lie.” (So the Devil was the source of the first lie, spoken in Eden. He used the serpent as a visible mouthpiece. The Genesis account is not using fictional creatures to teach a lesson. See also Revelation 12:9.)
Illustration: It is not unusual for a ventriloquist to make it appear that his voice comes from another source. Compare Numbers 22:26-31, which tells that Jehovah caused Balaam’s she-ass to speak.