Tom Allen: Mother Nature is a Mean Biker Chick
There are some great hiking trails not far from our house, and it’s been a lot of fun to wander around on them since we moved in a year or so ago.
That said, I may never set foot on them again.
This has little to do with the trails themselves and everything to do with the approximately 2.5 feet of copperhead I recently encountered there. It was a small miracle that I noticed him, as I don’t generally pay much attention to the path itself as I wander, but somehow I spotted him stretched across the trail just a few feet ahead of me, sunning himself.
I was close enough that he’d raised his head, was looking in my direction and, I can only assume, plotting the juiciest spot on my person into which to sink his fangs if I got much closer. We both froze, eyeing each other for a minute or two, and then, naturally, I did what every cell-phone-toting, 21st-century guy would do: I took the photo above. Then I quickly found the widest berth around him that I could, walked past, and proceeded on the trail, albeit a bit more alertly.
Moments later, I came across a fellow fishing in the nearby lake. Thinking he looked like more of an outdoorsman than me, I showed him the photo and asked him if he thought it really was a copperhead. He immediately identified it as such and then told me he was only afraid of two kinds of snakes. I asked for some specifics.
Grinning, he told me, “Live ones and dead ones.”
Why does Mother Nature always get portrayed as a sweet, kindly older woman who would bake you cookies long before she’d even consider siccing a venom-dripping animal on you? In truth, I think she’s a mean biker chick.
Not long after the copperhead encounter, I had the opportunity to spend a couple hours lounging on the banks of the Shenandoah River. It was a delightful afternoon, which I spent watching fish jump and blue herons fly.
Apparently, those creatures were only there to provide cover for their insidious pal, the tick I later discovered planted just above the knee of my right leg. No telling how long he’d been there, but I felt like he was probably well into his first pint.
I now totally believe the rumors that ticks are impervious to nuclear weapons, because this fellow just snickered at the several attempts I made to end his little bloodsucking life. He seemed uncrushable, so I finally resorted to flushing him. I have little doubt that he will emerge from a sewer sometime soon, transformed into a 250-pound radioactive creature, equipped with a GPS tracker and intent on finding me.
Also, wearing a Hell’s Angels leather jacket Mother Nature slipped him.
Animals have a long history of following Mother Nature’s instructions to give me the cold shoulder, even ones that belong to shoulder-less species. I’m thinking about trout here. When I was a kid, my parents took my siblings and me to a trout farm, where it was evident that the fish in the ponds absolutely couldn’t wait to be caught. We were given bamboo poles and kernels of corn to put on the hook. The trout pounced on those kernels at every possible opportunity, even resorting to biting bare hooks occasionally. Living conditions on the farm must have been pretty bad. I caught nothing all day. I’ll never fish again.
I’ve had a bird poop on my hand, narrowly missing the ice cream I was eating. My son’s been charged by an moose. My daughter-in-law seems a particular favorite of the avian crowd and has been dive-bombed by birds on numerous occasions.
I’m convinced Mother Nature was cackling in the control room every time.
And now, whenever I check the news, it seems some fellow human has been treated especially badly by a shark, alligator, tetradactyl—something.
Seems that hanging out on the couch and watching the National Geographic Channel might be a better option for awhile. Of course, not until I’ve checked with my wife to see if our place has been sprayed for termites.
