Ain’t Nature Sumpin?

 

During springtime Marjorie and I often search the woods near our house for morel mushrooms. This year we found 20 or 30 of the tasty morsels in our front yard and along the trail to the river. We ate them all in two settings and they were delicious.

After these two gastronomic treats, we never found any more ‘shrooms’ after the original harvest of morels. Nor have we found the other wild mushrooms that we occasionally find known as Shaggy Manes and they are equally as tasty as the morels. These mushrooms have an interesting characteristic – after reaching maturity they secret a black liquid that digests their fibrous structure leaving the original shroom an unappetizing mess should the black liquid begin its flow before you eat it.

On an earlier mushroom hunt, we encountered an experience in the woods that was beyond anything either of us had ever experienced. As we poked through the leaf litter searching for morels, something moved that caught my eye. I waited a moment for the critter to move again and reveal himself. He did, not suspecting that a human was mere inches away staring intently at his subtle movement and interrupting his afternoon nap. He stretched to reveal his full length. Somehow, he suddenly realized my presence and perceived that I was an unwelcome visitor. In a moment, his instincts took over and he began the show that his species had developed over generations to increase their survival rate in the woods where lived a whole host of predators.

He was a full-grown Hog Nosed Snake, the first I had ever encountered. Unlike the water snakes that live in our pond, this critter turned his head to look at me instead of making a fast break for safety. He looked me in the eye, no doubt assessing his chance of slithering away before he could be further disturbed. He began his performance without taking his eyes off me, moving slowly, lifting his head and his neck in an exact replica of a Cobra. His performance was like those shown in any number of movies where an orchestra plays fearful music first quietly and then with increasing intensity as if the lead character in the movie must surely be facing his end.

My snake did not have a sound track nor did he make any sudden moves away from either Marjorie or I as we stood over him quietly. He pointed his raised head first at me and then at Marjorie, while he flattened his head, making it seem larger and his nose more prominent. Then, suddenly he flopped over to show his belly, unmoving, and, as I learned later, playing dead. Marjorie and I waited, neither speaking and nor moving. After another moment, the snake moved again to his prior position, belly down, stretched to full length, and his head slowly moving to the Cobra stance, the better to see us. In another instant he flopped over again, as if to say “I am really, really dead.” He stayed dead for a brief moment before slowly slithering away into the deeper recess of the woods. We went home to ask Mr. Google if this was normal behavior for a Hog Nose Snake. We learned that all Hog Nosed Snakes behave in this pattern to confuse and escape from predators.

‘Aint nature sumpin.’