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Perspective: The Copperhead Connection

Writer's picture: Don LymanDon Lyman

On a warm spring day in 1967,  I was running down a dirt path during a sixth-grade field trip in northern Virginia’s Prince William Forest Park, when I first came across a large venomous copperhead snake.

Dappled sunlight filtered through the canopy of pines, oaks, and tulip trees, and fell in bright patches on the trail. In one of those sunlit patches the copperhead lay, and I failed to notice it until I almost stepped on it. At the last second, I jumped over the snake, and the startled reptile struck at me, but missed. 

I yelled to the boys who were running behind me to warn them. “Watch out!” I shouted. “There’s a copperhead!” 

My classmates and I stopped to look at the snake from a safe distance. I was lucky not to have been bitten. Copperheads are common in the South, and copperhead bites, although seldom fatal, can cause severe pain and tissue damage, and may require hospitalization and treatment with antivenom. 

As the snake crawled off the trail back into the woods, my friends and I began throwing rocks at the retreating serpent, striking the snake several times and eventually killing it. A park ranger arrived on horseback shortly thereafter. Thinking we had done a good deed by killing a venomous snake, I ran up to him and proudly told him of our heroic actions. “We just killed a copperhead!” I exclaimed. “It’s over there, in the woods.”

I was surprised when the ranger shook his head and admonished us for what we did. “You boys shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “You’re not supposed to kill any animals in the park.”  

The ranger explained that even venomous creatures like copperheads play an important role in the food web of the forest ecosystem. They feed on rodents, and in turn get eaten by hawks, coyotes, and other predators. If left alone, the ranger said, copperheads and other venomous snakes pose little danger to humans. I remember feeling guilty and ashamed for what I had done, never forgetting the lesson I learned that day. 


 

At the time of my encounter with the copperhead, my dad was a Marine, and I was living on    Marine Corps Base Quantico, about 35 miles south of Washington, D.C. With ample space to wander and explore, Quantico was an ideal place for a young boy with a love of nature. Creeks, woods, and fields provided endless opportunities to interact with wildlife and kindled my growing interest in herpetology — the study of reptiles and amphibians. 

I especially loved snakes. They seemed both beautiful and mysterious — long, sinuous, and colorful. The cryptic green snakes that blended in with the grass and bushes; black rat snakes with strong, muscular coils and scales that were iridescent in the sunlight; little gray-colored ringneck snakes with a bright yellow ring around their necks; and six-inch-long brown and pink worm snakes that instinctively tried to burrow between your fingers with their tiny spade-shaped snouts when you picked them up. 

Flipping over a log or rock and finding a snake underneath was like finding a treasure — it was almost something magical.                                                                                                                                                     

For nearly five years, Quantico nurtured my love of nature. My friends and I would revel in long boyhood summer days, exploring shady forests and splashing through clear, cool creeks, searching for turtles, frogs, snakes, salamanders, and whatever other creatures we might find. 

I left Virginia as a teenager in the early 1970s when my dad retired from the Marine Corps and our family moved to Massachusetts, but Quantico still looms large in my memory and imagination. It continues to nurture me, even in adulthood. 

Although I currently earn most of my living working as a hospital pharmacist, I also have a master’s degree in biology and teach biology part-time as an adjunct instructor at a college near Boston. I’ve returned to Quantico many times to roam the woods and creeks of my boyhood and for reunions with childhood friends. I’ve even introduced new friends to Quantico, taking them herping — looking for reptiles and amphibians — on the base. 


 

On one such trip, in the summer of 2014, I drove down to Quantico with my friends Ben Jaffe, a herpetologist and elementary school science teacher, and Ty Tanous, a videographer, both from Brooklyn. 

With permission from the Marine Corps, we were allowed access to the base, where we spent several days shooting video for an independent film project about herping that we were working on. I was excited to be back in my boyhood realm, searching for reptiles and amphibians as I had done in my youth. One night we headed over to Prince William Forest Park, the same place where my sixth-grade classmates and I had killed the copperhead nearly 50 years earlier, about half a mile from Quantico, to do some road cruising. 

As the name suggests, road cruising consists of slowly driving along back country roads at night searching for snakes and other reptiles and amphibians that might be crossing the road. Animals like snakes stand out against the blacktop of the roads and are easy to spot in your headlights.                                                                           

During the first hour or so, we found an assortment of frogs and toads, a worm snake, a smooth earth snake, and a five-foot-long black rat snake. We videotaped and photographed the animals we found, then moved them safely off the road and turned them loose in the adjacent woods.   

Later in the evening, as we rounded a turn, our headlights illuminated a large copperhead, about three feet long, crawling slowly across the road. 

I quickly pulled over, and Ben asked if he could try catching the copperhead. I handed him my snake tongs, which I use to capture and handle venomous snakes. He hopped out of the passenger side and ran towards the front of my SUV. When I got out to join him, I thought the snake was near Ben. But I was wrong. In the excitement of the moment, I failed to notice it had slithered to the driver’s side of the SUV. As I ran toward Ben, he shouted, “Don, watch out for the copperhead!” 

A man holding a copperhead snake with tongs on a road at night.
Using snake tongs, herpetologist Ben Jaffe holds the copperhead that Don nearly stepped on in Prince William Forest Park in northern Virginia. The venomous snake was moved safely off the road and released unharmed into the adjacent woods. (Courtesy of Don Lyman)

I looked down in mid-stride and saw the snake on the road directly in front of me. Startled, and realizing I was about to step on the copperhead, a surge of adrenaline helped me to spring off my left leg and jump over it.

My heart was pounding. The close call scared me and made me angry — angry at myself — for being so careless. A bite on the leg from a big copperhead would have meant a trip to the emergency room, with unknown consequences.

Ben caught the snake with the tongs, and we spent several minutes videotaping the venomous serpent and admiring its beautiful hourglass markings and namesake coppery-colored scales before moving it off the road and turning it loose.  

As I watched the snake crawl off into the darkness, I thought back to the copperhead incident of my youth that happened in those same woods. And it occurred to me that the copperhead connection had come full circle. 

The young boy who helped kill a copperhead several decades ago had grown up to be a biologist, with an understanding of the ecology of venomous snakes, an appreciation for their beauty, and a live-and-let-live respect for other creatures, even potentially dangerous ones.

Once again, I had jumped over a venomous snake at the last second, and narrowly avoided being bitten — another near miss, and a frightening coincidence. But this time the encounter ended well for me and for the snake. 


 

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Don Lyman

Don Lyman is a freelance science and environmental journalist, biologist, and hospital pharmacist from the Boston area. He has a master's degree in science writing, a master of liberal arts degree in journalism, a master’s degree in biology, and a bachelor of science degree in pharmacy.

Don teaches college biology part-time at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts, and he also teaches pharmacy part-time at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences University in Boston. Don also teaches as a substitute teacher at St. John's Prep in Danvers, Massachusetts.

Don wrote a monthly column on nature and wildlife for The Boston Globe. His bylines also include The Christian Science Monitor, High Country News, and Undark Magazine.

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