Snake memories
Today, my neighbor e-mailed me to tell me that there was a cottonmouth snake in her back yard. She wanted to know if I knew of anyone who would come and get it. Unfortunately, the snake did not wait for me to read and respond to her e-mail, so when I called her, it was long gone.
It did, however, bring to mind the trip that my sister, Diane and I took down the Ichnetucknee River a couple of years ago. We went in May before the season and park had officially opened. There were two other cars in the parking lot when we arrived. This made me a little nervous, because I always figured that the hundreds of people tubing down the river scared the snakes and alligators away. We decided to sit upright in our tubes rather than letting our bodies hang down through the middle, just in case.
The first part of the trip was uneventful. We definitely had the river to ourselves. We drifted peacefully down the river, enjoying the lush wildlife and the chance to converse. Our necks were getting a little tired from sitting with our heads up for so long when we noticed an older man coming up the river toward us. Strangely, he was standing up in a canoe reaching his paddle up into the branches of the overhanging trees. I commented as we met him that I wondered how he could keep his balance like that. He was the talkative sort, so he turned his canoe around and paddled up the river beside us for a way. He said he had a daughter and son-in-law in Jacksonville and it turned out his son-in-law and my husband were acquaintances. At one point I forgot to watch where I was going and had a panicked few minutes when the current pulled me over into the bushes at the edge. Visions of snakes made me paddle hard back to the middle.
It wasn’t until the next day that we found out what the older gentleman was doing on the river in his canoe. My husband phoned his son-in-law, who told him that his father-in-law was knocking cottonmouths out of trees into a bag so that he could sell them! We hadn’t even thought about that fact that snakes might be in the trees overhead!
It did, however, bring to mind the trip that my sister, Diane and I took down the Ichnetucknee River a couple of years ago. We went in May before the season and park had officially opened. There were two other cars in the parking lot when we arrived. This made me a little nervous, because I always figured that the hundreds of people tubing down the river scared the snakes and alligators away. We decided to sit upright in our tubes rather than letting our bodies hang down through the middle, just in case.
The first part of the trip was uneventful. We definitely had the river to ourselves. We drifted peacefully down the river, enjoying the lush wildlife and the chance to converse. Our necks were getting a little tired from sitting with our heads up for so long when we noticed an older man coming up the river toward us. Strangely, he was standing up in a canoe reaching his paddle up into the branches of the overhanging trees. I commented as we met him that I wondered how he could keep his balance like that. He was the talkative sort, so he turned his canoe around and paddled up the river beside us for a way. He said he had a daughter and son-in-law in Jacksonville and it turned out his son-in-law and my husband were acquaintances. At one point I forgot to watch where I was going and had a panicked few minutes when the current pulled me over into the bushes at the edge. Visions of snakes made me paddle hard back to the middle.
It wasn’t until the next day that we found out what the older gentleman was doing on the river in his canoe. My husband phoned his son-in-law, who told him that his father-in-law was knocking cottonmouths out of trees into a bag so that he could sell them! We hadn’t even thought about that fact that snakes might be in the trees overhead!