Road Cruising: A Night Hunting Snakes

Late afternoon we drove out of the city and into the countryside, way out into the lands of scattered pastures and woods.

The first snake we saw was a crushed mole king, and when D. swerved the car to do a turn around after he'd identified the snake and cursed that he had had to see it dead, the shoulder of the road gave way under his front tire, and we found ourselves stuck in mud.  D. went round to the back of the car and searched out an old half of broken skateboard and shoved it under the spinning tire, but it wasn't much help.  Rain had soaked the ground well the previous day and the mud swallowed the flimsy wood.  Lucky for us, a guy with no shoes and a dog in the back of his car pulled over and anchored a cord between his car an ours, knowing just the place to fit the anchor because he "did this stuff all the time."  The cord broke away on the first tug, and our car slung back even further into the muck, but after re-affixing the cord and giving one more focused lunge, mud spraying over the hood and windshield, we were back on the road. D. thanked the guy and gave him a fiver and a mini bottle of gin (!), and we headed to wash off the mud and fill up the tank, using both of the neighboring available gas stations to get this task accomplished.

While it was still daylight, we drove into the woods and parked the car safely on an asphalt turn-out and followed a hiking trail for a ways, and then went off the trail for awhile too. D. took pictures of his previous finds from two days earlier--a milk snake and a scarlet snake--while I roamed around turning logs and poking through brush hoping to spy something interesting.  The air was thick with humidity and runnels of sweat poured down my face and neck.  No breeze blew.

The photo shoot accomplished, we began to ramble the road, taunted by a dead hognose snake, and meeting a fellow herper on the way.  D. put a little rubber snake in the road as a winking joke for the others to find. Twice we stopped and I jumped out to rescue box turtles on their slow passage across the pavement. We saw no snakes as the sun sank, but I enjoyed the golden hour across the silos, barns, and pastures of cows and goats. Once a pea-hen in the road scrambled awkwardly back behind her fence, though D. believed it was a turkey.

As darkness fell, although I did not learn the route, I was aware that it was circuitous and began to recognize the landmarks we passed--like someone's shoes in the road, or the dead fox at the side, or the mailbox I mistook for a deer. And we did see deer, and frogs, and toads, and spiders with glowing eyes, and creepy crawling cave crickets, and an armadillo (or maybe a raccoon), and white cats, and a mouse, and one thin live snake which was quick on the crawl and slipped into the green at the verge and disappeared.

Music played loud and constant and varied and we drove with the windows down. Frogs croaked. My sweat cooled to a clammy almost chill. Damp mists hovered over the land. D. rubbed cinnamon scented balm over his shoulders and back which were tense from the way he gripped the steering wheel and leaned forward to scour the road.  From time to time we passed a fellow friend who frustrated us with counts of sighting ten or eight snakes, or of two snakes sighted just after we last passed. D. began to lament his joke rubber snake, saying it had brought him bad luck.

Near midnight, we all met up on a bridge, and everyone compared notes and looked at the collected snakes and spent time taking photos.  Many more snakes had been sighted than collected--big rat snakes for example were considered too common and uninteresting to collect, and had merely been photoed in situ. Copperheads, being venomous, of course, were not collected. A few common little snakes had been picked up just for my sake--a little rat snake, a garter snake--so I could see them, which was thoughtful. (The garter snake unhinged his jaw so that he could keep his teeth attached to my knuckles, which wasn't very friendly.) Some snakes were in bags or old socks, and some had to stay separate from others because they are snake eaters, and one was freshly dead, but held anyway so everyone could get a look at him. The sky was full of stars and the moon was behind the hills so it was very, very black.  Occasionally, a truck or two would pass and I wondered if they wondered what we were doing.

Can you count 5 different snakes?

And then it was time to head home, but first everyone went off to return any snakes they had picked up to be photographed back to where they came from, which everyone (except me of course!) surprisingly could identify. In fact, some of the people talked about getting the same snake from the same location two years in a row.  We retrieved the little rubber snake from his bad luck inducing spot on the pavement (ironically, he remained unspotted by anyone) and chucked him back to his place on the dashboard. And as we drove the roads one more time, we passed a dead milk snake, and a dead king snake still twitching from being hit by a car who had just passed us with its lights on too bright.  Maybe if we had been a little quicker identifying the dead milk snake we could have got him before he was hit. What are the rules of fate? Someone sent a text that he had spotted a bobcat.

The road home ribboned out in front of us and turned into a highway and we talked about the gods and the random rules and lore of snake hunting. 

Solace in the Outdoors

I have mentioned before that my oldest son is and always has been quite a naturalist.  I always love when he invites me out with him to wander the woods and hunt for reptiles and amphibians.  Spring is in the air here. Salamanders are breeding and snakes are beginning to poke their heads out of their holes and come up to bask a little.

 To find these guys, you have to put on your "snake eyes" and move slow. 

King snake

Ring neck 

Of course, for a lot people, this is NOT a fun way to spend the day.  But my son and I have done this since he was a little boy.

Spotted salamander

3 Lined salamander

I remember when I was a little, the school librarian read our class a book about a girl who sat very still in the woods and little by little animals approached her.   I always wanted to be that girl, and in many ways I was.  Or, I am.

Fire ant hill

I know when I saw Eliza Thornberry on TV, she was exactly the kind of kid I had wanted to be.  The outdoors girl who had adventures and could secretly talk to animals.
In real life, I love to watch insects at their work, or hunt up frogs in the night with a flashlight.  Many times I have pulled off the road to look at a run over snake or fox, or watch a heron stab a lizard on a tree, or a coyote lope across a field. I have chased after hedgehogs under bushes, and sat in my backyard watching as flying squirrels go from tree to tree.
Somehow there is solace in being outdoors.  And these days I need a lot of solace.

Like these daffodils.

Great banks of them were growing in the vicinity of the crumbled foundation of what was once a house some hundred years ago.  The bulbs, carried over time by soil and rain, divided and divided and divided I guess.  So, although the people are long gone, and time has moved on, the flowers proliferate each year, popping up their shoots and showing their bright faces to the early spring sun.

And somehow, that raises my spirits.

Snake Hunter

One of the reasons we were exploring the uncomfortable summer wilderness recently was my son's desire to find some interesting and rare snakes.  I know this sounds pretty weird.  But ever since he was a little boy, he has loved snakes.  He used to catch them and bring them home and keep them in his room for a few days and then we would take them back to the creek or wherever, and he would let them go.  Sometimes he would have as many as six or so snakes in his room.  Only one small one ever escaped (and I found him days later peeking from around the edge of the couch and was very relieved he hadn't crawled down the A/C vent), and one had live babies.

Gradually, he quit feeling the need to tote them home for a visit, and was content to handle them a little and let them go on their way.  Sometimes just sighting them was enough, and he let them lie.

With his perpetual field guide

He is very, very good at finding snakes.  And also good at identifying them.  When he was about seven years old he would ride in the back of the car with his Field Guide and say, "Mom, quiz me.  You say the common name and I will say the Latin name."

First grade science project

When he found a blind snake in Key Largo, Florida, I told him it was a worm.
"No.  It has scales, see?" He insisted, offering me a closer look at the worm in his grubby hand.
"It's a worm," I insisted.  Except then, the worm flicked it's tongue, which of course, worms do not do.  "It's a blind snake."

When he came to the pool at a vacation condo in South Carolina with a snake that was primarily brilliant red, I was out of the water in a flash repeating to myself, "Red touch black friend of Jack; red touch yellow kill a fellow!  Red touch black--red touch black!"  The snake had a long white belly, but that did not calm my alarm.  "Mom, mom, it's only a scarlet snake.  Isn't it great?  He was just over there near the elevator."

scarlet snake

Well, he is now a twenty-something young man but as his grandpa says, he has not outgrown his "snake-ism."

In his elementary school  Spanish class, he had to design a poster and write a little paper that described a job he might like to do in the future.  I laughed in surprise at his project.  "A Frito salesman?"  I exclaimed.  "I didn't know you wanted to sell Fritos!"  He shrugged, "Well," he explained, "I didn't know how to say 'wildlife photographer' in Spanish."

Creepy Crawlies and Rain

Pools that collect on the granite surface of Mount Arabia

King snake

Poblano pepper

It has been as tropical here as ever.  Little rains come up nearly every day.  Or torrents like yesterday, which stormed in and blew over trees and filled our little dog washing bathing pool up so high it flooded. On those sultry days when the rain doesn't actually fall, the sky is heavy and full and the air feels thick.  It's uncomfortable to move.
On the day we took the nature hike, we were all so sweaty we looked as if we had been rained on.  Our clothes were that wet!  Bleh!
But, it's good weather for toads.  And snakes, who eat toads.
My oldest son is something of a snake magnet.  We also saw a black racer that day, telescoping around among some lily pads, but as soon as he saw us--bam! He was off.  They don't call him a racer for nothing.
Meanwhile, it has been a back-to-school week, which means exhaustion as we adjust to new rhythms and expectations.  August, in my mind, should still be holidays--swinging in hammocks and eating Bomb Pops.  Ah well.