Snake Story part 2: The water snake

So a little over a year ago my family was gearing up for camp at PBC. Philip was coming back into town as well. Now I had my regular job and Philip was going to be head of the junior program. One of the things Philip loved doing 3rd week was tubing down the nearby river. We had a good amount of rain that week so the river was really running. Philip, myself, and some other people tubed it. It was pretty rock'n. Unfortunately we have a water safety... umm... now who reads this blog again?... worrier. She didn't think it safe to put 60 campers in tubes and send them down a small river/creek. So we did the second best thing.

Now whenever people go rafting they usually refer to the "river gauge" before hand. This is a measure of the height and flow of water going down a river at various spots. Thank goodness for the U.S. government (USGS) and their constant monitoring of river levels they publish online. Our second option for camper tubing was a small creek. If it had a river level on the USGS sight it would say something like "Did somebody flush the toilet?" So we were charged with the engineering feat of clearing this creek of boulders, rocks, and dredging a channel for overweight campers. We got to work clearing the creek and maximizing the river flow. It took us several hours to get the creek "navigable." We tested it out using a "Junior Camper" size staff member. "I'M NOT A JUNIOR CAMPER!!!"

Anyways, Mark and I were vigorously clearing our part of the creek of rocks and such and carrying on with some dumb conversation. We basically took big rocks and made a series of channeling dams down the creek to direct the flow of water toward the middle, thus creating a deep enough channel for larger junior campers. Anyways Mark goes to move a rock and quickly springs back noticing a water snake swimming away. So we chased down the snake, knowing it wouldn't be good to have a snake floating around next to the campers. I got Mark to throw me his pocket knife. I think Philip then showed up and Marcus bailed out and jumped to the bank. So Philip and I track down this unknown water snake with stick and knife. Philip gets him pinned down and reach down with the 2" blade and destroy the snake.

Well like any males in that situation we figured we'd show off our good work to the other males in the group. So we took the snake and started showing everybody else. There's something gratifying about killing stuff, especially snakes. Anyways somebody left it on the ramp to one of the teaching shelters as a "hey look at what we did." It started getting close to when campers were going to show up. We began looking around for our "Junior Camper" tubing tester, but she was nowhere to be found. Apparently she doesn't like snakes. And by doesn't like snakes I mean she had a panic attack when she saw she was about to step next to one on the ramp of the teaching shelter. Ummmmm. Ooooops.

Paul "I swear I didn't put it there" Murphy