news-record.com

Don't tread on me.

The slithering silence of autumn's stealthiest hunters is underfoot. It's late snake season in North Carolina. We sometimes find that out the hard way.

I was in the woods recently, tramping noisily down to a creek I'd once explored as a youngster, curious if I would remember the trail, unconcerned that it was under 40 years of undergrowth and a foot of new-fallen leaves. Brier Creek was the destination of all my journeys back then, a summertime place of solitude away from school and baseball coaches and the shrill noise that was the '60s.

It also was a snake-infested stream that fed Sugar Creek to the south and eventually the Catawba River. I know its route now because of Mapquest. I'd forgotten about the snake-infested part.

Brier Creek was where I saw my first snake in the wild, a long black snake that dropped from a tree like a wet branch inches from my feet. I have no idea what happened after that. I ran home and don't remember any of it.

Over the years, I would come across many more serpents down in the creek, water snakes that swam past our swimming hole, a ribbon snake I tried to catch unsuccessfully, a small fearless brown-and-copper snake that seemed perfectly camouflaged against the ground until I used a stick to pin its triangular head so I could pick it up.

It was probably the dumbest thing I ever did as a kid.

The scariest sound in the wild in this state has always been the rattle of an eastern diamondback. They grow to 9 feet long down near the coast.

The most frightening of our childhood warnings is the folksy "red on yellow, kills a fellow; red on black, friends of Jack." Luckily, we don't have coral snakes here in the Piedmont.

The most spine-chilling sight in this part of the country is that of a coiled cottonmouth, jaws wide open, fangs exposed.

But there is one snake that gives no such warnings, makes no sound, inspires no witty sayings.

The copperhead.

This is the time of year when this snake tends to cross our paths, literally. And unlike other snakes whose defense mechanisms include sliding away into a hole or under a log or into the brush or making a display of its tail or its fangs, the copperhead holds its ground.

And then strikes.

"They're very fast," said Jeff Hall, a herpetologist for the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. "This time of year, they're a little slower. But they're quite agile. They're seeking a place to spend winter and we come across them on warm days. If it can't get away, it's going to hold its ground, flick its tongue and look in the direction of the disturbance-- in this case, you. If you come too close or step on it or try to manipulate it any way, it's probably going to bite you."

Ron Key, a forensic pathologist at Moses Cone Hospital in Greensboro, is one of the area's experts on venomous snakes. He said such meetings between man and copperhead usually turn out badly.

"A lot of the bites in the autumn are probably due to people out raking leaves and working in the yard," Key said. "They don't think copperheads are out. And they're mistaken."

Key, who has been bitten twice by copperheads, said he once saw one in the dead of winter in Randolph County.

"I actually have a picture at home from one of those days when there was snow on the ground," he said. "The sun was out. I was out walking and I saw what I thought was a snake, and sure enough it was a copperhead sunning on a rock."

Copperheads are the only one of the four venomous snakes in North Carolina to thrive in the Piedmont, the only one that lives across the entire state. Per capita, North Carolina ranks behind only Arizona and New Mexico in venomous snake bites, Key said. Three people have died after copperhead bites in North Carolina over the past four years.

This is the time of year when people least expect to come across them, which makes it a dangerous time to be walking through leaves and underbrush on an animal path no one has walked on in years down to a creek I hadn't seen since I was a boy. The sun was out on a warm afternoon that reminded me of those days, took me back to my youth when every day was an exploration and the creek was my refuge. I'd been down the path a hundred times, barefoot and oblivious, searching for arrowheads and adventure.

I thought back to those days as I waded through the grass and the leaves and the fallen branches, carefully stepping over rocks and logs and avoiding ominous signs and recalling the myths we heard, maybe even made up, about snakes.

No, they don't smell like cucumbers. No, they don't breed with black snakes to form black copperheads. No, they don't chase people.

And still, the hair stood on my arms as I came to a clearing and stopped dead in my tracks. Sure enough, a few feet from where I'd once pinned a juvenile copperhead to the ground with a stick lay a 3-foot long serpent, already loaded in the "S" position, alarmed by my shadow, of all things, and with no intention of letting me pass. In the distance, I could hear the creek gurgling over a pile of rocks we'd put there ourselves as kids, forming an idyllic pool alongside a sandy beach where we spent our summer days far from the noise of the neighborhood.

I'd thought about going back there for years just to see one of my most cherished spots on earth one more time. But this wouldn't be that day. I was three yards away from three feet of venom. And summertime was over.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or at ed.hardin@news-record.com