Snakes

Frank Willis, post: 369121, member: 472 wrote: I was doing a resurvey last week, and retracing a 1960s survey plat by my former partner, Daniel Sandefur-now deceased. Sandy's survey plat contained a note pointing to the edge of Rattlesnake Bayou about 40 feet from the property corner. It said "Found rattlesnake 5'-6" length." As I was approaching the corner in the woods and dense poison oak along Rattlesnake Bayou, I encountered a large cotton mouth at the approximate same location. He slithered into the bayou. This reminded me of a survey I did in the 1980s when our survey crew came upon a huge snake in the middle of a pasture we were surveying. I put a leader note on the plat saying, "Found Big Snake." I thought it was funny... The property owner was selling the land, and it happened that the purchasers were examining the survey plat during the property closing, and they backed out of the deal because of that note. The land owner who had requested the survey is an attorney himself, and fairly litigious. For a while, I thought it would be my first claim my professional liability insurance, and wondered whether coverage would be denied because of that note. It think of Sandy a lot, and I miss him. He was a surveyor's surveyor and civil engineer and a cum laude graduate of LSU in the 1950s. The similar snake experience made me feel not quite as stupid about the chicken snake note.

I like those stories. They tell life as it is. Puts humanity into a survey.

A couple years ago I was pegging final boundaries of a subdivsion in our hinterland.
It was untouched bush abounding in creatures of all types.
The corners were å?" iron rods with stones piled around them.
We gathered the rocks and disturbed a pair of our Funnel Web spiders. They can be deadly.
They were far from happy at the disturbance, somewhat agitated.
I wrote in the survey notes against that corner "IRod & stones, and 2 very crabby spiders".

Shows continents apart we still think and at times act alike.
Thanks for posting.

Funny story. Several years ago high in the black hills I was walking down a gentle slope with the foresight on my shoulder, notes in hand kicking my feet through the brush, one piece of brush was a gardner snake, I kicked it right up in front of my face. Mainly I just laughed thinking of coworkers I have deathly afraid of snakes and how fun it would have been if it had been one of them.

An unusual snake encounter (to me anyway)

[MEDIA=youtube]yZoDr4GNV0c[/MEDIA]

A buddy of mine does a wide variety of work to earn a dollar. Earlier this spring he agreed to demolish and old house and a single-wide trailer house then shove them onto an existing large pile of brush. I saw the ball of fire one day driving by on the highway. A few days ago he told me that place was absolutely loaded with snakes, maybe hundreds of them. Every kind, size and color. Some would get hung up in his dozer tracks and come flying past him in the cab. I'm guessing they had all spent the winter together in, under or near the abandoned, yet solid house only a hundred feet or so from a fair-sized creek surrounded by trees and vines.

He also reported that when he tipped over the trailer and began to move it three of the biggest raccoons he had ever seen appeared and raised their middle fingers at him. They were extremely unhappy.

P.S. Apparently raccoon is like deer and moose, or else spellcheck doesn't know any better.

I have a couple of cousins close to my age that spent their youth "sheltered" on their father's cotton farm down in Mercedes, Tx. They both tell the same "snake" story...must've made an impression on them.

After they both got out of school they wanted to "see the world". Somehow they got hired on a huge ranch in the Big Bend area in Texas. They showed up there late one evening and the other ranch hands showed them their bunks and told them they would be putting up fence the next day.

Being good farm stock they both were awake at 4 AM, dressed and sitting on the wagon full of t-posts with their gloves...ready for work. Finally about 9 AM the foreman showed up, drank some coffee, and about 10 got a tractor hooked to the rubber tired wagon loaded with posts and lazily headed out into the hills. Neither one of them could understand why nobody "got up and hit it early"...but they kept their mouths shut.

They drove t-posts until about 4 PM when the hills started casting shadows and their foreman told them to pack it up, it was time to head back. My oldest cousin finally spoke up and told the foreman they had a lot of sun and a lot of energy left and they both would like to stay out there and work. He told them "suit yourself", unhitched the trailer, and took off on the tractor. He told them he'd come back later and get them.

They'd been out there about a half hour after the foreman left and the shadows started getting longer...and rattlesnakes started slithering out of EVERY crack in EVERY rock...everywhere you looked. The snakes were particularly interested in the shade of the trailer. The snakes got so thick my cousins wound up sitting on top of the trailer until the foreman came back to get them around 7 PM...grinning. Apparently when the shadows are long and there's some cool, the snakes love it...So working in certain areas was limited to parts of the day that had full overhead sun.

They weren't so quick to jump out of bed the next day.

They could have simply planted my corpse right there. That's the kind of stuff that leads to horrifying, recurring nightmares.

Was on a field crew doing a large boundary years ago. Kenny was the name of the guy in the office doing the drafting for this particular survey. As a joke we took a shot out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the survey and labeled it "Kenny's mom". Him having a good sense of humor labeled the shot on the face of the plat. The boss caught it during review and Kenny removed it before sending it out the door, but it was certainly funny when we were all sitting around the table with the boss during the review. Still laugh about that one to this day.

I never like working around the Angelina River. I've seen more balls of snakes in the river or near the river than most any other place.

Lake Fork Creek was home to some of the biggest snakes I've seen before Lake Fork filled. Heard that is why the lake's Bass grow so large.

During my youth in the NE part of Wood County there is a stock pond NE of Sandy Creek that is so totally full of snakes no other creature goes near. Could see the movement of the mass of snakes from 100 yards away. A spooky sight .......32å¡49'00.9"N, 95å¡18'50.4"......looks all grown over now.

Bassett Creek in Bowie County has a snake in every puddle of water in and within a few hundred yards of its banks.

Must say that Wild hogs have put a real dent in the snake population during the last 20yrs.

Jon Collins, post: 369126, member: 11135 wrote: Funny story. Several years ago high in the black hills I was walking down a gentle slope with the foresight on my shoulder, notes in hand kicking my feet through the brush, one piece of brush was a gardner snake, I kicked it right up in front of my face. Mainly I just laughed thinking of coworkers I have deathly afraid of snakes and how fun it would have been if it had been one of them.

Several years ago I was staking a sanitary sewer outfall in late Fall. Making a cut line through thick brush leaves a nice clean path for the sun to reach the ground and warm up the snakes. I was walking out one afternoon I had one foot in the air when a snake slithered out from between my feet. Don't let ANYONE tell you white men can't jump. I cleared about four feet, jumping off of one foot with a tripod over my shoulder and a theodolite box in my other hand.

Andy

[USER=81]@A Harris[/USER]

GoogleEarth shows your pond to be near Oak Grove. That reminded me of a phone call from a potential client this week. When I asked where the tract was located he said it was across the road from Oak Grove school. I asked which one. He seemed surprised that I would ask that question. He didn't know there were three Oak Grove one-room country schools in our county back in the days that there were about 115 total in an area of 576 square miles. One of them was two miles straight west of my boyhood home. His is about 19 miles to the south. It was built rather well out of stone and is still standing. The one a couple miles from me was moved a bit over a mile and converted into a house, which is still occupied full time. The third one was about 20 miles to the west southwest.

We also had two named Hazel Dell and two named Prairie Queen. But, Oak Grove was the champ with three.

A Harris, post: 369155, member: 81 wrote:

Lake Fork Creek was home to some of the biggest snakes I've seen before Lake Fork filled. Heard that is why the lake's Bass grow so large.

During my youth in the NE part of Wood County there is

I used to ride motorcycles in the bottom of lake fork.
Do you remember Fishers Pond?
It was out 515, From Emory, then take a left. Year was 1977-1978.

Holy Cow, post: 369138, member: 50 wrote: three of the biggest raccoons he had ever seen appeared and raised their middle fingers at him

That perfectly describes the attitude of our urban raccoons. If you meet one on the sidewalk at night you yield the right of way to them.

We could depend on Steve Owens to code Dead Kat when doing a road topo.

Only slightly related, my favorite attorney called to chat about a survey drawing, and she asked, "Why is the dog so sad?" Eventually I found the note by the entrance curb that said, "Depressed cur (sic)."

Ah, those were the good old days.