The late spring sun shown brightly and the woodlands were verdant with newly greened leaves. Crows cawed over head and a broad-winged hawk circled lazily. I was clambering over some sizable tumbled boulders. To my left was a roller coaster that, come sundown, would be zipping boisterous, screaming, throngs up and down inclines that I didn’t even want to imagine and around hairpin curves that I wanted to think about even less.
To my right the boulder field eased and the greenery encroached tightly. I had been told that here, amidst the very rocks I was now traversing, northern copperheads, Agkistrodon contortrix mokasen, denned, foraged, bred, and underwent their quiet lives unseen and unsuspected by the amusement park employees and attendees.
I wasn’t sure that I believed this, for although I knew the rocks to be home to garter snakes and black racers, I was one of the many who never had suspected the presence of a pit viper of any kind. And so far on this glorious spring day my total for snakes seen was zero.
I had made my way, slowly and searchingly, across the expanse of boulders and was about to carefully make the return. In preparation I stepped out into the woodland, and stood for a moment listening to the sounds of the wild. Birds on their spring migration were cheeping, chirping, and lisping overhead. I listened for a few minutes, then turned to begin my return.
Ahead of me, among hundreds of others, was a flat, foliage surrounded, sun-drenched, rock. And what was that spot of orange on it? I looked more closely. Neonate copperhead.
The tales were true, and this day would live forever in memory.
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