If you know how to drive a canoe you generally end up in the back. However a day’s outing of graduate students and advisor on the Wacissa River has certain expectations of adventure with the sawed-off afloat. This constituted a real opportunity for….payback!
Many are the stories of snakes jumping into boats passing under tree limbs. Falling is really more like it as you cannot “jump” if you have no legs. I do not doubt it has happened but suspect that the logical possibility is what fuels most stories for water snakes do spend a lot of time sunning on limbs over water as they can escape quickly by dropping.
Now I knew the Wacissa had plenty of water snakes; big brown water snakes were its long suit. It was mid morning and a likely time for them to be sunning on tree limbs over the water. It took a few passes to spot exactly what they were doing but it became clear a particular arbor geometry was favored and they were tending to be on the down stream side.
Stan was in the canoe’s stern and after a few trips past some brown’s sunning he knew what we were looking for. What we were going to do about it was the only thing that could possibly work.
Because the water was fairly swift, and water snakes are quick to fall into the river when trouble approached, we had to make our move quickly. I suspect it all worked as well as it did because the snakes were so accustomed to passing canoeists they could not believe that an approaching canoe would paddle as fast as possible directly at them and into the foliage. We had the added advantage of some concealment because the snakes were on the down stream side of the limbs with leaves blocking their view of our attack. The downside was we were not entirely sure what (all) was on the limb as we careened in.
And so it went. The other boats would stop paddling and start watching. Stan would line us up with an accurate current/canoe heading and paddle as fast as possible, with me hanging over the bow, into the tree.
There were always a number of possible, not mutually exclusive, outcomes including capsizing, finding nothing, finding a cottonmouth, finding a wasp nest. As events unfolded there would be much limb and leaf shaking and back outwards Stan would paddle us with me waving a big brown water snake over my head for all to see.
We ended up with quite a few brown water snakes. I do not remember if we kept them that day but I do remember a time of having too many water snakes and returning to the headwaters of the Wacissa River with a bagful.
ML
