40. Surprise, surprise

Junior camp overnight to a new place.

 

Every two to three weeks junior campers were taken to the end of the wilderness trail to spend the night; only the older cabins as I recall. Generally we marched down the valley through senior camp and headed a few miles to camp along a creek. This time we trucked them to a new place and settled around a small lake, on the side of a hill, whose outflow went into a fairly large creek.

This large creek was a) shallow, b) in full sun as it ran along the edge of a wide open pasture and c) full of big flat stones and swarming with minnows. In short…..Snake City.

 

There were so many water snakes and so many kids that I told them to just turn over flat rocks and callout how many snakes were there; three per rock was not uncommon.

 

Flash forward, same place different war party: ML, Bailey One (high school friend) Bailey Two (college friend). Bailey One and I were from Oak Ridge (this place was middle Tennessee about 30 miles west of Nashville) but Bailey Two was from Ft. Lauderdale which turned out to be “good”.

 

Bailey Two was on a visit from south Florida to see what was what in Tennessee, snake-wise. When he first arrived he HAD to go snake hunting but I explained to him, as it was pouring rain, that a good spot (creek through a golf course) was out as the standard banded water snakes and queen snakes would not be on branches hanging over the creek and sunning as there was no sun. But he HAD to go. Turns out they were “sunning” as usual…go figure.

 

So we hit this middle Tennessee snake city creek with Bailey One and I assuring Bailey Two that water snakes were all that were going to be under the rocks. So Bailey One and I head down stream and Bailey Two heads up stream with all flipping rocks like mad.

 

Then comes an inquiry from upstream, and I quote, “what the f..k is this?!?!” Well the “this” was a cottonmouth and judging from its size and strong markings a member of the western tribe.

This was a surprise on a number of levels. First, I had been around this general territory for years and never seen, or heard of that I believed, a cottonmouth. I’m talking in rivers, creeks, lakes etc. Also I had explored this very spot with an army of kids and only water snakes were found (“lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky…..”). Most significant, surprise wise, was that Peterson’s “A Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians” (edition 1, Conant & Conant, 1958) had the western cottonmouth range ending well west of where we were.

 

Range maps are a good start in identification as snakes don’t migrate far (no legs). But there it was (around 1970). Naturally when the second edition of the field guide (1975) came out I immediately turned to the cottonmouth range map and sure enough the cottonmouth range had been extended east in middle Tennessee putting them where this character had showed up.

 

I never met Roger Conant but I think I saw him once sitting at a small table at a meeting of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. As I recall he was wearing a straw skipper and had a three ring binder on the table. A line of people were waiting to talk to him who, I surmise, had input for his range maps. These were surly people Conant trusted to know where they were when they saw what. For the most important decision every person makes every day of their life is who to believe.

 

ML

3 Jul, 2018

39. Save the chickens

We worked with carnivorous reptiles in the psychology department and fed them baby chicks.

 

Baby chicks were easy to come by if they were males as the market was less than for females. Don’t know what the hatchery did with most of those baby roosters but they were free for the asking. We kept them in a chick raising cage, until their time came, on the top floor of the old psychology (ca 1966) building.

 

Wandering psychology coeds came upon them, learned of their use, and held forth with nasty notes about ‘you heartless, evil, psychologists’. I noted back with “…..at the hatchery theirs is a vacuous fate, here they contribute to other life….”

 

 It was a set up for when I bumped into these psychology ladies and delivered a more pointed message, “How many do you want to save or do you just want to just shoot your mouth off?” (I save the good stuff for personal encounters) This approach worked extremely well, initially, for all concerned.

 

Well a few of the sisters took me up on the offer and I tossed in some chicken food just to show my heart was in the right place.

 

The problem was going to be that baby chicks don’t stay babies for long. At about 4 weeks old they are well on their way to rooster-hood…….and flying. Chickens being chickens eat a lot, poop a lot, and did I mention flying.

 

Predictably back the rescued came and the most recent owners had experienced an emotional epiphany. The flying pooping chickens had done their business on their stereo, records, sofa, etc. Not only did they want to return the chickens they wanted them to die. Some wanted to watch.

 

Higher education if there ever was.

 

ML

19 Jun, 2018

38. Running rings

38. Running Rings

Standard summer snake hunting road trip, i.e. dark.

Tram road, running southeast off Capital Circle to Wassissa, was sandy dust for most of its length (paved closer to Wassissa). This had the most excellent feature of recording the tracks of crossing snakes which, at a minimum, gave a quick fix on general snake activity. At a maximum it indicated how long ago the snake crossed (time of last passing car and whether or not there were tire marks over the snake track), the direction the snake was going and some idea of species. We actually caught a few just off the road.

At night, however, the tracks were hard to see and the unfolding adventure was, in the event, on the paved part.

In the truck headlights it looked like a long row of small shower curtain rings racing across the road from left to right. Johnson and I knew one thing and concluded another. First, we had never before seen anything that looked like that and second…….coral snake.

The snake hit the thatch just off the road and mostly disappeared to the point that at one point my foot was on him. I was armed with a hoe snake stick, i.e. a regular hoe with the blade knocked off leaving a strong metal hook on the end of a long, apx. 1.5 inch diameter, wooded handle (keep this material and dimension in mind). A particularly good instrument for flipping over big/heavy things or digging around in the flat dry grass for a coral snake.

While the play by play is a blur, three key elements of the battle are with me forever. First, and I’m not exactly sure how I ended up with the wrong end of the snake stick near the snake, he bite the hoe handle with sufficient enthusiasm to be suspended BY HIS MOUTH ALONE from the handle about three feet off the ground! The point here is that the story was around that a coral snake, because of his small mouth, could only bite you in the area between your fingers. Forget that Jack. I think he could bite you on the flat palm of your hand.

Second, apparently having gotten the snake off the hoe handle and suspended by the hook, it was the snappiest snake I had ever seen. A snake on a snake stick generally keeps his mouth shut. This character was grabbing at thin air apparently bent on getting a hold of anything.

And third, I don’t remember if we got him into a snake bag or a big plastic jar but I do remember the brief exchange after things settled down. With few words Johnson and I agreed that we’d been taking some serious risks. But it was the first coral snake for both of us and fortunately not the last. Still “let’s be careful out there” boys and girls.

ML 19 Jun 2018          

37. Laziest fisherman

37. Laziest fisherman

Setting: small fishing pier at the mouth of Pensacola Bay.

 

Cast: ML, Shaving 1, Shaving 1 mother and some really fast/funny locals (or it was a routine they had developed over time as what happened had probably all happened before).

 

Time & objective: Late evening so light was failing; standard rules in play: anything is better than nothing, big is better than small, edible is better than inedible.

 

I was bouncing a shrimp around the bottom when there was a ~hit with material resistance on the way up but not much fight. As I lifted it out of the water it looked about 3 ft long and white and, remember failing light, I thought I was looking at the bottom of a scary big blue crab. As I lifted it higher I could see the ‘catch’ was a Spanish mackerel that someone had caught, filleted and tossed the remains back in the water.

 

This was a foreseeable scenario as I was fishing next to the cleaning station. But as I pulled the cleaned skeleton over the rail and into the pier deck light one guy yells…”Don’t reel ‘em in so fast”. And another quickly follows with ….”Laziest fisherman I ever saw; only catches fish that are already cleaned”.

 

ML

12 Jun, 2018