{"id":91,"date":"2008-07-24T16:58:58","date_gmt":"2008-07-24T20:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/?p=91"},"modified":"2008-07-24T16:59:47","modified_gmt":"2008-07-24T20:59:47","slug":"ophidiphobes-beware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/ophidiphobes-beware\/","title":{"rendered":"Ophidiphobes, beware"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend B. came to visit so activities the last few days have been mostly limited to lying on the beach and playing embarrassing tennis. Tuesday, though, we did some sightseeing, and all was going swimmingly–blue skies, gentle breezes, nature walks–until I came around the northeast corner of the Stavkirke<\/a>, one of the island’s main tourist attractions, and came face to face with a three-foot-long snake.<\/p>\n

If you know me you know that the rest of the day was basically shot. It took a good six hours and several glasses of wine for me to stop shaking, not to mention flinching at every twig and garden hose that came into my peripheral vision. But while at the Stavkirke, as I curled into a fetal position and tried not to vomit, B. went back and took some pictures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can see, the snake is rocking that urn, apparently auditioning for a part in a Rudyard Kipling story. What’s not visible is the rattle.<\/p>\n

It rattled.<\/p>\n

I decided we should go report this to someone (I’d already alarmed several other tourists with my howling). So we trotted across the street to Trinity Lutheran, which runs the Stavkirke, and poked around until we came across a pair tuning the organ in the sanctuary.<\/p>\n

“Um, excuse me? Are you with the church?”<\/p>\n

“Yes,” said the church lady.<\/p>\n

“Well, we just . . . it seems silly but there is a GINORMOUS snake with a RATTLE hanging around over by the Stavkirke”<\/p>\n

“There are no poisonous snakes on Washington Island.”<\/p>\n

“OK, well . . . um. Still. Um. It’s really scary.”<\/p>\n

“There are no poisonous snakes on the island. Really. But I’ll tell the pastor.”<\/p>\n

“Um, ok. Thanks.” And we backed out of the church, feeling both foolish and righteous.<\/p>\n

The rest of the day was occupied by the aforementioned shaking and flinching. But two days later I had pulled myself together enough for a research trip to the awesome Art and Nature Cente<\/a>r. Here’s what I found out:<\/p>\n

It is a fox snake, one of only about 20 on the island, by the guesstimation of the unflappable ANC docent. (“Oh, yeah — I released a fox snake over by the church a couple years ago. Maybe it’s the same one!”) Not to be confused with a milk snake, which has a diamond pattern on its head and is a constrictor. The fox snake doesn’t really have a rattle, but it does have the skeevy ability to shake its tail scales in such a manner as to emit a sufficiently menacing sound when threatened. It might bite, but not so much as to, you know, kill anybody. It can grow up to 54″ long.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That’s four-and-a-half feet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I don’t know that I’m going back to the Stavkirke anytime soon.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend B. came to visit so activities the last few days have been mostly limited to lying on the beach and playing embarrassing tennis. Tuesday, though, we did some sightseeing, and all was going swimmingly–blue skies, gentle breezes, nature walks–until I came around the northeast corner of the Stavkirke, one of the island’s main … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-washington-island"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}