Cruel Fangs on a Canoe Trip

It’s hard, sometimes, when you flip a canoe in cold water, the lake’s black water closing over your face, turning to darkness, with an angry water moccasin close by.  

We had just found the thick snake coiled up in the bow of my canoe, sleeping, after I flipped the canoe right-side up in preparation for launching on a North Florida lake. The snake opened wide its cotton-white mouth, and the big fangs were a terrible sight…The owner of the lakeside house where I keep the canoe dutifully scooped up the big snake with an 8-foot dipnet and released it, but dropped it in the water just about where I launch the canoe, a soft spot between hard cypress knees. The thrashing snake angrily dove underwater.

So, I dragged the canoe 20 feet to the right, out on the tipsy floating dock that tends to submerge slightly, when you stand on it. I piled in my fishing gear and eased into the canoe, but was stranded—-the stern was still stuck on the dock, my weight pressing it down. I pushed straight left towards the water with a paddle, harder, harder, and then too late—-I flipped into that cold black water. The canoe somehow righted itself, and no equipment was lost, but I was submerged in blackness with that big snake close by.

All I could think about was the Irish lad in the movie Lonesome Dove, who while crossing the Nueces River in Texas, wound up with a water moccasin clinging to his face. (He died in about 10 minutes). Perhaps this snake had other things on his mind, however, for I never saw or felt him while climbing fast onto the dock. Sputtering and dripping wet, unable to believe it after 15 years of safe canoeing, I trudged up to the house. However, the owner had no clothes that would fit me. So, it was drive back home nine miles, change clothes, and try again.

This time it worked. The canoe launched and I eventually caught 12 crappie on artificials, more than enough for dinner.

The fish were hiding and spawning behind cypress tree trunks, with low-hanging branches draped in Spanish moss—-more suitable cover for snakes. But these reptiles are a little sluggish in this chilly weather, not up in the trees just yet. If a big one had dropped from a tree into the canoe, it would have turned real ugly, but that hasn’t happened yet. Several big gators were startled into life nearby, but we’re used to seeing them. They don’t attack canoes, merely thrash and splash and give us a start at times. I also heard a gator drumming in the water, a mating call that travels quite a distance.

That was enough excitement for one day. It would have been safer to buy a box of fishsticks at the store. However, with the kind of day I was having, I would have been caught in a supermarket crossfire between the store’s manager and two armed robbers.