Of course, we should have composed a much more deserving photograph of the following, but we were prevented for several reasons. One, we possess little if any skill in the ways of cameras. Two, if you really want to see The Creek through my eyes and you do not already wear smudged-lens bifocals, then an out of focus image of a coiled darkness in front of you will perhaps approximate the experience. And three, when the hormone and neurotransmitter adrenaline is secreted from the adrenal gland into the circulation, it really doesn't matter what that dark rope is in front of you because it now is in back of you and you are running like any other common fool. Only when the photographer is cool will the viewer be sufficiently rewarded.
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| Western cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus) |
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| Working my way around behind it (look at the shape of that head). |
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| And all that's left is a water trail and the impression of innocence. |
Water moccasins don't live much farther west than where we are here at The Creek, so we get the pioneers, the frontiersmen, of the species--leucostoma. And a creekside in the middle of Texas is a perfect place for this semi-aquatic pit viper (the world's only of its kind). Here it lives mostly off of frogs and fish. Thus its Latin name "piscivorus," from piscis and voro, which mean "fish" and "to eat." It will, of course, attack a person. But rarely.
When tested to determine the snake's ferocity, 23 of 45 (51%) tested cottonmouths tried to escape while 28 of 36 (78%) resorted to threat displays and other defensive tactics. Only when they were picked up with a mechanical hand were they likely to bite. (Whitfield Gibbons J, Dorcas ME. 2002. Defensive Behavior of Cottonmouths (Agkistrodon piscivorus) toward Humans.) Human fatalities are rare.
According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, only 7% of all Texas snakebite cases involve cottonmouths, and of all people killed by poisonous snakes in the United States, only 1% of these deaths were from the water moccasin. And according the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only about 5 (five!!) Americans are killed each year from poisonous snakes. That's a lot of fear for so little actual death. [Lightening gets about 200 Americans a year. Fireworks, about 7. In the twelve years from 1997 to 2007 407 people in the U.S. were killed from "wind-related tree failures."]
Watersnakes (the ones we are not supposed to be afraid of) look a lot like cottonmouths, but there are some key differences. Though watersnakes can be aggressive when threatened, they usually escape quickly when approached, unlike the other which will often coil up and threaten right back with its white, opened mouth. Only the pit viper will rattle its tail as part of its display. And when the cottonmouth swims or crawls away, it generally keeps its head at a forty-five degree angle.
They are most active at night. [This sentence deserved a paragraph of its own.]
And they can bite under water. I remember as a child being told that they couldn't. I was also told by the same person that one of their favorite foods is fish.
So it goes.
But all that coils, attacks, and devours is not serpent. About a week ago I noticed a new plant growing along The Creek. More precisely, growing across some of the water willow (Justicia americana) plants at the south end of The Pond and just downstream between it and The Pool.
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| Dodder (Cuscuta) |
This is dodder.
Over a hundred species of this invasive plant range, wrap, and wrestle their way across the world. Some species of this genus has arrived at The Creek coincidentally about the same time as Agkistrodon piscivorus.
Dodder has been placed within the morning glory family, but it goes by any number of interesting names: devil's guts, devil's hair, devil's ringlet, goldthread, hailweed, hailplant, hairweed, hellbine, love vine, pull-down, strangleweed, witches shoelaces, angel hair, witch's hair. (If you're interested in names of places and things, and if you've driven around these United States, then you've noticed that half the high waterfalls, rugged peaks, treeless ridges, and desolate deserts have been named some version of 'angel,' 'devil,' or 'hell.' And sometimes, as with Cuscuta, the same thing can be named simultaneously for two or more theologically inconsistent references.)
New seedlings spin about, searching for a host on which to wrap itself. Often, I read, the plant "smells" for the scent of a host plant. And because it contains so little chlorophyll, it depends on drawing all necessary carbohydrates and nutrients out of the host plant. When the dodder finds a suitable host, it grows small bumps along its stem called "haustoria" which drive into the tissue of the plant and begin the meal.
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| The dodder's tendrils on the right appear to be reaching out to the hapless water willow. |
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| The parasitic plant will not let go. |
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| Haustoria have formed and inserted themselves into the host plant's stem. |
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| Dodder fruit and seeds forming. |
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| Dodder soon to be pickled with a spray of vinegar. Probably a futile effort at its eradication. |
So, does it feel more like Eden before or after our awareness of these two serpents?
With the cottonmouth water moccasin, I felt the greatest temptation to lift a stone high over its head and do it in. But, of course, it is part of The Creek, and so I am experiencing again a bit of sympathetic antagonism. The same goes for the dodder, the fire ants, the mosquitoes, the sun. The list is not a short one.
And still on the same topic of guests in the Garden, half the trail along the pool side is bordered by the healthiest green vines you can imagine.
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Rhus toxicodendron, or Toxicodendron radicans
Either name will do. It's poison ivy. |
This was The Creek on Easter morning, after all.
