In years past seeing snakes during Cousin’s Camp has been pretty much par for the course. There are several places in The Country that they have been known to congregate. The Cotton House, the trail to the lake, under the Cabin, and along the rocks at the gate. This year though… Y’all… And, yeah, Mom and Kristi you should just go on and skip this post. Between Tuesday and Sunday we saw fourteen snakes. FOURTEEN. Three were found behind the barn, one on the trail near Grandmother’s Spring, six at the Cabin, one at the Cotton House, two in the field beside the Barn AT NIGHT, and one at the rocks near the gate. This ridiculously large snake we saw at the cabin was the beginning of the Snakeapolypse.
This was one of the most surreal hours of my life. At one point there were three HUGE snakes within twenty feet of us. One on the roof of the Cabin, one on the porch and one on the tree. It was insane. I’ll try to explain what happened. This snake was being chased by the snake in the next picture. I’m not sure if they were trying to mate or what but either way this one crawled into this hole in the roof and the other one began to bite his tail as he slithered into it. As he tried to capture the other snake he actually FELL off the rafter! The third snake was just chilling on the roof. Sheesh…get a room snakes.
Jamie, Hank and I were down at the Cabin with my Aunt Sue when all this went down. Just between me and you and the Internet my Aunt Sue was way too cool about this whole situation. I took several videos in which lots of hilarity ensued. Here is the first. And here is the second. Honestly, I LOVED seeing the snakes. They fascinate me. They scare me too but they definitely fascinate me. Plus I think it was a great thing for the kids to see. This guy…When we first realized we were basically recreating the snake scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark Jamie freaked out just a bit. He looked at me and said ‘I’m freaking out’ in a shaky tone. I said ‘Flight or fight, James! What’s it going to be?’ He took a couple seconds and then got this crazy fierce look on his face and said ‘Fight!’ Yeah, James! And p.s. James would never actually hurt a snake. He won’t even go to the rodeo because he doesn’t like to see the animals get hurt.
I was able to chat via Twitter with David Steen, a phd in Ecology. He surmised that we may have seen more this year because we had so much rain the week leading up to camp. He was also adamant that there was no reason to kill the snakes. So we didn’t! Yeah, us! Next year I want to have someone come speak to the kids about snakes at camp. Several years ago we had the Southeastern Raptor Center come and they were amazing. So…who is ready to go spend some time with me in the Country? Huh? What? No takers? With these brave guys to defend us what could possibly go wrong?
