FAYETTEVILLE OBSERVER (N Carolina) 15 August 10 Death of a king snake, and that's all (Charles Broadwell)
I was at a construction site in the middle of Nowhere, N.C., let's call it, looking over a black tarp-like material stretched across a big hole in the ground.
It was another hot afternoon in August. Over on one section of tarp I could see what looked like an extra piece of black rubber in an S-shaped twist.
Then I walked closer and saw it was a snake.
I tossed a little water on it, poked it with a stick, took another look. The snake didn't move.
The construction guy said it looked like a king snake.
We know king snakes as good snakes. Not poisonous. In fact, these tough snakes actually prey on venomous ones like copperheads.
We know copperheads. On Monday's front page, we had a story detailing that North Carolina led the U.S. in the number of reported copperhead bites last year.
So this was doubly bad, this scene and this snake stretched out before me this afternoon in the country. We had this snake, apparently an eastern king snake, known to many as a good snake, even as a good pet.
But it was dead, ghostly, eyes wide shut. As I bent down to pick it up by the tail, I had this sad sense of something gone wrong.
That's because I suspected that this valiant snake, maybe 4 feet long, had absolutely baked and died on this big black tarp.
I'm no biologist or herpetologist, but it appeared that the king snake started to make it across the slick tarp, for 100 feet or so, and got overwhelmed by the unnaturally sun-fried terrain.
I envisioned a painful death.
I tossed the skinny snake at the edge of the woods, where it no doubt would become food for buzzard or varmint.
In the woods, and even in my yard at home, I've been more leery of copperheads lately after reading the "We're No. 1" in snakebite reports.
But as I learned years ago from a man in Bladen County who piled up sticks and logs in his woods for snake habitat, even the nasty rattlers serve their purpose in nature. We need to be watchful and not unlucky, that's all, as with bears in our woods and sharks in our seas.
We can count on the good old eastern king snake as an ally. Sometimes, in a helpful way, we just need to watch out for it, too.
Death of a king snake, and that's all