Peer Pressure and Pit Vipers
Ricky’s Ford Thunderbird smelled like death. The scent emanated from the trunk. When I walked to the passenger side, the aroma almost knocked me down. “What the heck is that stench,” I asked my high school best friend. He explained that he found a freshly dead Southern copperhead on the road, and wanted to keep it as a trophy. The skull would be used for a decorative mount; the skin for a hat band he proudly proclaimed. In his brilliance, Ricky decided to let the viper’s head decompose in a Tupperware container in the trunk of his car. The crudely tacked and salted Southern copperhead skin was rotting in that same trunk. “You’ve got to throw that thing away” I said. His stubborn confidence wouldn’t let him budge on his new treasures, despite their smell.
After a few minutes of futile protest, I got in the passenger seat. We drove a handful of miles down the road and ditched his rusty clunker on a side street. Like a mirage in the summer heat, we slid across the main road and crept towards the woods. According to the law, and all the posted signs we would be trespassing, but that didn’t bother us. There were snakes to be found! We were explorers. We were adventurers. Pesky property lines didn’t deter us from our quest. Thankfully no one seemed to mind our presence when we’d tell them what we were after. “Y’all want to find snakes? Take all you want!” folks would typically say.
Growing up in rural North Carolina, it was easy to be enraptured by the local flora and fauna. The environment was still ripe with mystery and enchantment, especially in the days before social media stole our imagination. Going into the woods often felt like entering a sacred place; a sanctuary of sorts. Snakes always seemed to be the holiest of my “religious” pursuits when I entered the forest. The enigmatic beauty they possessed seemed to call to me from their hidden dens.
This particular plot of land was owned by a local hunt club. The only problem was that the clapboard house along the main road, directly in our path, was on private property and we’d have to pass through the periphery of their yard to access prime habitat. It was a risk worth taking. In the mid-afternoon heat of summer, no one really cared if we were out there. It was an unwritten rule. As long as we didn’t destroy anything, steal anything, or get hurt, no one seemed to mind.
Having read the first edition of “Amphibians & Reptiles of the Carolinas & Virginia” by Bernard S. Martof et al nearly a dozen times cover to cover I had a basic idea of the reptiles and amphibians that existed in Randolph County, North Carolina. I practically memorized every fact, range map, and picture from that book. One of the range maps seemed to show that Timber Rattlesnakes (Crotalus horridus) barely ranged into our area. “Canebrakes” as many locals called them, used to thrive across much of North Carolina but with habitat loss and fear-based killings they were extirpated from much of their historic range. For this reason, and a sheer love for snakes and adventure, we were determined to see those buzz tails for ourselves. Having never caught a living pit viper at this point in my life, this was a lofty goal.
The day was oppressively hot and grubby with thunderstorms looming off in the distance. This didn’t deter us in the least. It was perfect snake finding weather. We hiked aimlessly across the two thousand plus acre tract of land until we arrived at some old pit mines from the turn of the century. Growing up in our small town we heard rumors of the mines but we hadn’t had a chance to explore them, now we were looking right at them. We could feel the cool humid air rising out of the depths, beckoning for us to venture over the edge into its treacherous embrace. Randolph County, North Carolina produced copious amounts of gold and silver in the late 1800s and many of the old mines still littered the backwoods. There were no signs warning of the sheer one-hundred-and-fifty-foot drop into the chasm. There were no fences preventing us from accidentally falling into the abyss. The mines were just large holes ripe for teenage adventure seekers like ourselves.
With no supports to hold up the walls cut into the hillside, we scoffed at the dangers that lay before us. I secretly battled thoughts of cave-ins and other catastrophes as I prepared myself to endeavor into the abandoned mine. The shafts were too steep to walk into without a rope, so we brought Army surplus ropes and turned our backpacks into makeshift harnesses. Once inside, the main tunnel branched off into side shafts that we could scramble through without a rope. Ricky went in first. Being afraid of heights, I hesitated. He called me every matter of name he could think of until I sucked it up and breached the cliff’s edge. “Here goes nothing” I thought as I launched myself into the dark mouth below.
I was amazed at these cavernous relics from a bygone era. One day people were making money hand over fist and the next they were gone. Leaving these abandoned pits for nearly a century. The mines now served as hibernacula for tri-colored bats, big and little brown bats and likely several other species. The water in the bottom of the main shaft was nearly black. The rumor was that these mines all connected underground somehow but we weren’t about to test the theory. Once the miners stopped pumping out the groundwater, all those decades ago, the subterranean shafts flooded with a mix of toxic mining chemicals and putrid water. We knew this wasn’t exactly prime habitat for rattlesnakes, but one could surmise there was at least a chance to find some unlucky crotalid in the underground maze. It was mostly an excuse to explore the unknown, and we didn’t need much prodding.
As we scrambled up and out of the mines, wiping red mud and bat guano off our pants, we were charged with the exhilaration only achieved by doing sketchy stuff and surviving. We reconvened our search for the ever-elusive timber rattle snake. We caught a flash of liquid mercury sliding across the hot ground out of the corners of our eyes. It was a snake! We ran through the brush and reached into a small shrub pulling out an irate black racer snake (coluber constrictor). Although it wasn’t our target species, it gave us hope that the conditions were right for snakes to be out on the prowl. We continued our humid death slog through the southern summer heat for another hour or so.
At one point it felt like we were tap dancing over copious fence lizards, fowlers toads and five-line skinks. We even came across an Eastern Box Turtle in a cooler part of the forest. Had those toads, turtles and lizards been our targets, we would have been in heaven, but they only served to keep us on high alert as they skittered and hopped noisily across the dried leaves. Every movement sounded like a rattlesnake to our hyper vigilant ears. We found a well-worn trail in the center of the hunt camp and decided to follow it to the next ridgeline. Ricky made his way around ten feet ahead of me and I brought up the rear of the serpentine patrol. As I stepped over a tuft of grass in the middle of the trail something caught my eye. A slight movement. I assumed I had seen a large beetle or some other insect and almost kept moving forward. Shock and disbelief took ahold of me as I did a double take to the spot I literally just stepped over. It was a rattlesnake. I must have seen just the tip of his keratinous rattle and my “Spidey sense” registered the danger of my current position. My eyes, however, were initially a little slower on the uptake and didn’t immediately register the danger.
I shouted “RATTLESNAKE!” and Ricky immediately turned on his heels. As we crept closer to the perfectly coiled serpent centered on the trail, we had the fatal realization that we BOTH had stepped over this snake. We were well within strike range, and it never moved. This snake wasn’t out to get us, it was relying on its flawless camouflage as its first line of defense. Taking our cues from Steve Irwin we broke off some scrubby branches and tried to coax the snake into a position where we could simultaneously scoop the mid body on the stick and grab the tail. As soon as Ricky moved towards the snake with the stick, it straightened out and began to move with a purpose towards the thick undergrowth. As it was escaping, Ricky lunged and grabbed the tail, which was a horrible idea. This was one of those “don’t try this at home” moments. Our over-stimulated 17 year old brains just couldn’t compute the real danger we faced in that moment of excitement. Just then, for the first time, the snake rattled and both of us jumped back. Ricky instinctively released the tail. Hearing that primal alarm bell sent a jolt of pre-programmed fear through both of us.
The snake wound itself around the base of a shrub and started to get into the iconic S shape, preparing to fight to the death if necessary. Sensing the gravity of the moment, I fearfully suggested we leave this snake and be satisfied in knowing we found what we were after. This did not satisfy Ricky’s stubborn need for conquest and he again berated my trepidation. This snake didn’t see us as allies, in its mind we were predators and it was prepared to defend itself with any means necessary. I’d like to note that the snake gave us multiple opportunities to retreat prior to taking an aggressive posture. It is also worth mentioning that this event happened over twenty years ago and although this author sees value in experiencing nature hands on, I no longer think it a good idea to recklessly endanger my life and the lives of wildlife just for the sake of saying I did it.
Once the rattlesnake was pushed to its last resort it was in a position of do or die. It defensively struck out a few times, thankfully missing us both. It proved to be a dangerous game of chess with this beautiful viper in the backwoods of North Carolina. We carefully unwound the fortified snake from the base of the shrub moving it back out into the open. Ricky pulled out a pillowcase from his cargo pocket and we cautiously slid the serpent inside. “What in the world are you going to do with this snake?” I asked. Ricky, full of righteous pride, said “I’m going to keep this thing in my bedroom.” True to his word he carried that rattlesnake in a pillow case on the end of a stick in proper cartoon drifter fashion. For the rest of the way back to his rancid thunderbird, Ricky almost skipped with a sense of pride due to his triumphant capture. The car did not smell any better when we arrived sweaty and exhausted. Ricky popped the putrid trunk and plopped his new prize inside. Allegedly.
About halfway home, we both had the realization that this may not have been exactly legal. It definitely wasn’t the smartest idea we had that summer. In our exuberance, we failed to see the asterisk in an updated field guide that mentioned timber rattlesnakes were a threatened species in North Carolina. Whoops. Thankfully this was long before social media and the local officials were likely as clueless as we were anyway. Considering timber rattlesnakes, or any snake in that area, typically were killed on sight, we felt like we were in an ethical gray area. Again, with around twenty years of hindsight this was clearly negligent on many levels, but most adventures worth telling start with a bad idea.
We felt like heroes in our hometown as we retold the story to our friends. With each retelling, the rattlesnake would grow a foot longer and its strikes were closer and more aggressive. The rattle would be louder and more ferocious sounding with each iteration of the story. Ricky kept that rattlesnake long enough for the thrill of feeding it live mice to fade away. Once the stories began to disinterest our friends, he decided it was time to release it. A couple weeks after our initial adventure, we hiked it back to the exact spot where it all began. We decided to take a less direct path to the site so we wouldn’t be noticed this time. Releasing snakes on private property was much more of a sin in the eyes of the local populace than removing them. We carefully coaxed the snake out of the pillowcase and let it go on its way. Even though we temporarily detained this snake, we loved it and didn’t want any harm to come to it. We were sad to see it go, but it was the right thing to do. The snake was a little fatter from being enthusiastically overfed, and maybe a little frazzled from the whole experience, but all in all it was no worse for the wear and we had a story to tell.
Originally published in REPTILES Magazine in print only. Check them out.
If you liked this post, you may enjoy reading about another youthful misadventure involving yours truly and a rather sketchy journey to meet a primate:
Easy to feel that promiscuous young teen energy and the now more mature respect for species threatened. Excellent writing.
Great story Stan!