Serpent is a lovely word

Saturday I went to the Edisto Island Serpentarium in South Carolina. Someday, in about a year, I will get my photos developed (I used disposable cameras with zoom, rather than my digital) and post them. In the meantime, here's the written rundown:

It was a gorgeous afternoon for a drive, although it ended up being a bit longer than I expected. Much of it was on two-lane highways through rural areas with the kind of old, falling-down buildings (everything from houses, trailers, and barns to an ancient packing plant) that I love to photograph, although I didn't stop much to shoot. The serpentarium was mostly cool. I was a little disappointed that in the venomous snake habitat (an outside island with a moat and a wall) there were only rattlesnakes and copperheads. I have a special interest in cottonmouths and would have loved to see some of them swimming. However, I did get to see some gorgeous diamondbacks swimming and also saw one strike at a mouse.

Everyone else in the place rushed to the gator pond for the 4 p.m. feeding, and I felt jaded for not being very interested. I've seen gators surface to gobble up fish in the wild and fed baby gators at the Crab Shack, so watching a bunch of adults catch slices of chicken that someone tosses to them isn't that exciting. (I would never have foreseen myself reacting this way when I first moved to Savannah!)

I am also sort of getting interested in turtles, which I have never found very compelling. I think it's because as I contemplate possible landscape features for my backyard, I keep returning to the idea of a pond, and turtles in an actual pond would be pretty cool. I had planned to feed the turtles and bought a baggie of turtle snacks in the gift shop to do so, but there were some kids at the turtle pond. I thought I was sharing the snacks with them; I guess they thought I was giving them the entire baggie because they made off with it. Oh, well.

Inside, there was an open area with, the gift shop cashier said, eight large constrictors. I spotted seven. It was cool, but they weren't *that* big; the pet store where I buy rats for Fade (my python) has several that are much larger. Outside, the nonvenomous snake habitat included not only snakes, but also baby gators, an iguana, and turtles. There were snakes everywhere--in the grass, in the water, twined through the tree branches. It was seriously cool (and would have given my serpent-phobic father nightmares).

There also were golden silk orb weavers everywhere. They're beautiful, enormous spiders with vast webs, and often if you notice one and then look up, you will see layers of webs and spiders stretching up to the treetops. I have been trying in vain to get a good photo of one since the first time I saw them (on the Sapelo Island trip four summers ago); we'll see if I at least caught a decent silhouette this time.

I stayed for the 5 p.m. snake show, which was given by a man in his late sixties (he said; I thought he was younger) from Guyana. He had the craggy face and longish, greasy hair of a Scooby Doo villain, spoke with a delightful accent, was missing half of his teeth, and presented some information I didn't know (such as that snakes don't actually have scales--their skin is pleated so it can expand when they eat prey larger than they are). Afterward, I got to meet his wife, also from Guyana, also missing teeth, also with the accent, and they started telling venomous-snake stories.

Driving there, I had passed several road-side stands selling fresh peaches. I wanted to buy some but knew I wouldn't eat them. Instead, I stopped on the way back at a country store and bought a few bottles of locally brewed, nonalcoholic cider and various other fun things, including alligator jerky (which made for a slightly surreal snack after just seeing a bunch of gators, but then, how many times have I eaten a hamburger while watching cows and not even made the connection?).

I also drove through downtown Beaufort, which I had never done before, and realized I have to return sometime with black and white film to shoot the many graveyards in the area. After all of which, I rushed back to Savannah and changed clothes just in time to go out with Kate to Lulu's, a chocolate bar downtown, which was also a fun experience.