Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Snakes, Jock!

    I went to Congaree National Park today for a walk, because I had to, man! It's 85 degrees today and will top out at 55 again by Thursday; I just had to! Parenthetically (see?) I was embarrassed that I forgot to carry water; hey, it's been winter for a while now. Anyway, the anecdote portion of our anecdote is pretty brief. There was a snake basking on the low boardwalk. I was tickled (and later the rangers were, too) that it was basking in the shade. Hey, I don't want to tell you your job, Mr. Snake, but wouldn't over there in the sun work better?
    I showed the picture to the rangers to verify that it was a brown water snake (it was) and an older lady described a snake that she and her husband had seen. She asked him to show us the picture he had taken and he did. Unfortunately, his camera couldn't blow up the picture on the screen at all. Neither the ranger nor I wanted to admit that we had no idea what in the picture was supposed to be a snake. Eventually, she decided that the little green stick in the middle must be a garter snake and I left them looking for a field guide to reptiles to verify. But that uncomfortable minute or so of, "What is this supposed to be a picture of?" was pretty funny.
    If anyone in this area code is reading this, the mosquito meter at the park is at All Clear. Also the rangers said that work on rebuilding the elevated boardwalk (after-- cough-- more than a year) will start at the end of the month. So yay all around!

No comments:

Post a Comment