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There’s a little house at the bottom of Woodrow Place where my friends Mary and Kate once lived just at the border of the large field where we all play. At the foot of the yard is a small electric station, surrounded by a tall chain link fence topped with barbed wire.
It almost seems like they don’t want anyone going in there.
Tyler and I are exploring the creek that runs to the right side of this little building. I love the creek although I never have any luck finding frogs or tadpoles or crawfish.
A litter of copperhead babies. Mother copperheads give birth in the fall and immediately abandon their young. It pays to be careful on
autumn walks and hiking.
On this day, we notice that someone has pulled up the lower part of the fencing around the electric building, just enough to crawl under. Tyler looks at me with a raised eyebrow and I’m in. I go first, squiggling under the fence, and get up on the other side, dusting off my pants. Then Tyler comes through.
Once within the fence, there’s nothing to see. Nothing except something squiggly on the back of Tyler’s sweater. I take a closer look: it’s a BABY COPPERHEAD!
“Get it off me! Get it off me!” Tyler shouts, jumping around.
“Stand still. I can’t get a hold of it if you don’t stand still.”
“Okay, okay. Just get it off me!”
After much effort, I manage to pick it off, pinching it behind its little head so it will let go and running to drop it on the other side of the building. Baby copperheads are venomous, as potent as adults.
We go back to the place where we entered the enclosure.
Damn, damn, damn, damn.
We just crawled right through a nest full of baby copperheads. What a pair of numbskulls! Where’s Big Mama? Probably in the stream we were just mucking about in. Where’s the other baby, the one I threw away? No doubt it’s heading our way for revenge.
Tyler and I don’t know then that mother copperheads leave their babies at birth. It wouldn’t be a big relief if we had.
I look around at our surroundings. Sure enough, the top of the fence is completely covered in rolled barbed wire. There are no other breaches in the chain link fence. No sticks to push baby snakes out of the way.
Shit.
I look at Ty but can see he hasn’t got any brilliant ideas either.
“We’re just going to have to go out the way we came in,” I say dubiously.
Ty is nodding. “Maybe I can take off my shoe and try to shove them aside.”
You’re a Boy Scout and that’s the best you can do?
“I guess we have to try.”
The shoe comes off and Tyler spends a hairy ten minutes pushing some, but not all, snakes out of their nest. He looks at me dolefully. “It’s not going to get any better than this.”
I agree.
He goes first, leaning as far away from the nest as possible and kicking with his heels to project himself away from it.
I take a big gulp and do the same. Miraculously, we each make it through without acquiring a little snake. We check each other’s backs and pants, and stand well away from the nest, with our hands on our knees, blowing out our breath to still our nerves before we go home.
Now that we’re out of danger, we ridiculously are considering sharing our exciting story about our adventure. We quickly realize that the truth is a no go. So, we concoct a tale about finding a nest of baby copperheads in the field where we all play.
Our story is a hit!
The next day some adults head over to the field to check things out. They discover it is absolutely infested with copperheads. Within a week, the vegetation in the field is burned to the ground.
No more hidey holes there.
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