Ding Dong, The Snakes are Gone

Or should I say dead? Yeah. For those of you not up to date on our snaky soap opera at camp feel free to read up on the two older posts on the subject. For everyone else:

Clay and our excavator, Jeff headed out to camp yesterday and proceeded to dig up the existing well and install the new culvert. My father-in-law stood by with camera and (yes) a weapon of his choosing. What followed was scoop upon scoop of dirt, stone, and you guessed it, snakes. Clay said at times the bucket was full of writhing bodies. (Ugh.) There were easily twenty plus snakes inside the well not counting the ones that have already been killed in the weeks leading up to us ultimately destroying their home. The largest were measuring around five feet with the average being about three, and they were literally everywhere, in the dirt, in the stone, falling out of the bucket, and swimming in the water at the bottom where it had not been drained.

When all was said and done a beautiful, clean concrete culvert, complete with a ladder on the inside was buried vertically in the ground, and already filled back up with water and, most importantly no snakes. A sealed cap will rest on top. Sadly, the stones from the old well were too badly damaged in the digging and could not be salvaged amongst all the debris and dirt and snakes. I was hoping to use them for something since they date back to Clay's great-great grandfather (at least). The pictures told the tale, and as I perused them last night on our digital camera, my first thought was that we can never show them to Clay's mom, as she will have nightmares for the rest of her life.

But my second thought is here is yet another story to add to the list of memories we are already accruing for our camp. And believe it or not I will add some of these pictures to the scrap book of building shots because they are part of it too. Besides years from now when we are all sitting around the gas stove in camp after a little too much alcohol, someone will start referencing snakes and no one is going to have to ask why. In fact, if I know this crew there is a long line of rubber snakes, snake stuffed animals, and snake jokes coming our way. Indiana Jones has got nothing on us.