Reptiles Love this Weather!

This morning, we had 12 miles to walk, which we aimed to do before lunchtime. Why the rush? Well, we had plans to meet our friend Stan in Boiling Springs, PA, and go to his parents' house for the weekend. In addition to seeing a good friend, we would have the opportunity to go swimming, eat delicious food and drink some cold beer. Therefore, we were moving at a pretty good clip.

I usually walk first, and the trail is so rocky, that I spend a fair amount of time looking at the ground, to keep from tripping. This is a good thing, since there are occasionally things besides rocks on the ground. Today, I nearly stepped on a copperhead, that was stretched out across the trail. I guess I scared him, because he snapped his head around towards me, just as I gasped and stopped suddenly, causing M to nearly run into me. Copperheads are relatively common in this area, but we hadn't seen one yet, and definitely hadn't seen an angry one yet. We waited for a minute to see if he would slither off the trail, but a minute turned into ten, and he continued to just stare us down. Normally, we would just walk around the snake, but this part of the trail was rather narrow, running up a mountain through laurel thickets overgrown with, as we call them in Pittsburgh, "jagger bushes". This was not particularly appealing to us.

We entertained some other solutions. M threw a small rock in the direction of the copperhead. Nothing. M offered to use my trek pole to fling the snake off the trail. I thought about this for a moment, but could not remember exactly how to treat a snake bite, and so declined. Stan was on his way to Boiling Springs. Also, it was about 95 degrees, so we were standing there baking in the sun. The snake continued to hold his ground. We had no choice; off the trail we went, giving the snake plenty of distance, but getting "jagged" a little in the process. We continued up the mountain.

M remarked that we had seen a lot of toads and snakes in the past few days, but had not seen a turtle. Would you believe that not a mile down the trail I nearly stepped on one? He was traveling slowly across the trail, but cooperated well enough as M snapped his picture.

A few miles later, I halted again, this time for a black snake. Not poisonous, but he was also refusing to give up his sunny patch of trail. I walked off the trail, fortunately not into a laurel thicket this time. When M went to pass however, the snake became even more defensive, beating its tail on the ground and hissing.

That was the last reptile sighting of the day, but believe me, I was watching where I walked!