AdventuresInNature

This is the time of the snake.

Black snake. Garter snake. Diamond-back rattlehead.

You name it. Snakes are out and about these hot summer days, doing the things snakes do, which is mostly scaring humans into issuing primal screams.

I have a theory. Snake venom doesn’t kill animals as large as humans. Not often, anyway. But pure, unadulterated fear and loathing can douse your lights quicker than you can yell “Snake!,” then make a normally impossible flat-footed jump of 90 degrees.

Once, I was already coming down with my weight on my right foot along a path through the Great Dismal Swamp when I spied a huge cottonmouth moccasin in the exact spot I was about to step. Coiled he was. Ready for business.

The next thing I knew, I was 10 feet to the right of the path, entangled in some bayberry bushes but with no clear recollection of how I got there. I’ve always assumed I levitated out of harm’s way.

The point is: Now, if ever, is the time to be on alert for snakes. Dog Days are coming, which is the time my grandma said snakes go blind and will bite anything, although they seem to have a propensity for sandaled feet and bare ankles.

This is a busy time for snakes. Many are laying eggs in old tree stumps and piles of rubbish and rocks. And because a snake is cold-blooded, he feels best and is most active when the weather is hottest.

Just last week, an acquaintance lost one of the family dogs -- a rat terrier -- when the little animal tackled a copperhead. And lost big time. Bitten several times, the poor dog died within 12 hours.

On another occasion, about this time of year, a park-ranger friend at Shenandoah National Park walked out the back door of her cabin one night to take laundry to the basement. She was barefooted when she stepped on a copperhead in the dark. “I knew better,” she said. “I should have had shoes or boots on, and carrying a flashlight.”

Two years later, her foot remained so swollen that she couldn’t lace her regulation ranger clod-hoppers all the way.

If it’s any consolation (and it won’t be; I know that), there are only four poisonous snakes in the United States. Those four are the rattlesnake, the copperhead, the coral snake (in Florida mostly) and the cottonmouth moccasin.

Better yet, only two of those (the copperhead and the rattler) are found with regularity in Virginia and Tennessee. (There’s one tiny exception. Cottonmouths live in the Great Dismal Swamp in the southeast corner of Virginia, but only an idiot would be prowling around in that steaming jungle in summer. I rest the case against my own idiocy.)

If you’re fishing, hiking, camping or in any way spending time outdoors in July and August, chances are you will encounter an occasional snake. If it’s a blacksnake or any other “common” breed, let him go his own way while you take the opposite route. Should make both of you feel better.

It is only the venom-packers – the rattlers and copperheads – that you need worry about. Don’t turn over rocks or logs or stick your hand in any place such a woodpile where a snake could hide.

And as always, if you’re about to step on one in your path that you didn’t know was there until too late, immediately levitate up, across, backward or forward.

Just do it without thinking. You can always change underwear after you get back to the car.


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