Sneaky Snakes go dancing

Southern Illinois has snakes. Lots of snakes. When it gets warm in the spring, the snakes wake up from their winter slumbers, and wiggle on over to the rivers and creeks to find some food and begin the warm-weather snaking season, and sometimes they cross roads to do it. Down by my brother's house, there are so many of these jaywalking--jay-slithering?--critters that they actually close the roads. His report? Oh, the snakes. They're in transit. (I post this without his permission from an email he sent to our mom, who knows somebody who wanted to go camping down there.)


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Well, pretty much all the snakes are out right now. They still haven't been real active, but with these warm days I'm sure that's changed. We've got copperheads, cottonmouths (water moccasins), and timber rattlers that are all poisonous, especially in the southern part of the Shawnee, and a whole lot of nonpoisonous ones. Further north they have the pygmy rattlesnake, or massasauga. It's so small it probably wouldn't hurt you anyway, and they are very rare. We do have one road closed to vehicles for the snake migration, but everything else is open.They will for the most part avoid humans, but I would not trust cottonmouths too much, they're more ornery. They are usually in the wetter areas like swamps. I actually almost grabbed a copperhead about a month ago. I was climbing up a really steep hill, and occasionally using my hands to help pull myself up. I stopped after one such step, and started to step up again - and stopped, since I noticed a copperhead coiled up right in front of my knee. It was so cold, it didn't even flick its tongue or try to get away. It was probably just coming out of hibernation, had probably come out to get some sun, but it was getting darker and cooler as the rain was coming and I think it got too cold to move. It blended in perfectly with the leaves.
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Hmmm. Just another walk in the park, I guess. A walk in the happy, sunny, copperhead-and-rattlesnake-infested-swamp park.