Creatures of the Woodsy Deep.

With the great outdoors comes the eminent presence of crawling creatures. The Ozarks apparently grows ‘em to be plentiful and big, or at least that is what we have found thus far.

Within the first hour of arriving at the Tree House, Em and I uncovered the biggest spider we’d ever seen outside of the zoo. It was big, black, and hairy; Mom—who was standing above on our deck—mistook it for a frog because it was so massive. The spider had all its baby spiders attached to its back, and we could see their little bug eyes staring up at us in fear as we moved a stick closer and closer to the arachnid. Eventually, after having been provoked enough, the spider fled for its life.

That wasn’t the end of our animal encounters. No matter how air-conditioned or clean a cabin is, there will always be a nest of critters buried away in some cranny, just waiting to be uncovered.

We had unpacked our suitcases, coolers, bags, and snorkel gear, had eaten supper, and had settled into a cozy night of reading when we heard a snap. I ignored it, but I heard Rachel sit up from the sofa below and tip-toe into the kitchen.
“What was that?” she said. I was at a key part in Picoult’s The Pact—they had just arrested Chris for first-degree murder—when I heard Rachel yell and run up the stairs.

“I think it’s a mouse!” she said. “It’s making noise under the sink.”

Yeah right, I thought. Over-exaggeration.

“A mouse? Where?” said Em excitedly as she sat up in bed. Then I heard it too: a squeaking noise, followed by the echo of something dragging across the inside of the cabinet.

Sure enough, when I bolted down the stairs and opened the cabinet, I saw a mouse dragging a mousetrap. Its little foot was stuck, and it was trying to wriggle free.
Em ran to wake Dad, who had been sleeping for a good while. He stumbled into the kitchen with Em trailing wide-eyed behind him. The three of us girls stood and watched Dad stare at the inside of the cabinet, probably trying to formulate his plan.

“Why aren’t you doing anything?” Em asked pleadingly, not exactly pleased to see a cuddly creature in pain.

“I’m trying to wake up,” he said patiently, rubbing his head. “Hold on.”

He grabbed a bucket, I grabbed a broom, and we managed to sweep the petrified mouse out of its hiding place. Dad and Em took that frozen rodent outside where, according to Dad, it shot straight into the woods.

Snakes are an entirely different matter. Rachel, out of all of us, dislikes them the most. Dad calls it a heightened awareness of snakes. I call it a strong aversion.

“They’re creepy,” she said. “And they slither. They just want to come after me, I’m sure of it.”

She’s been avoiding snakes this entire trip. She counted three snake sightings on our kayak trip down the river. She especially disliked the one that stared at her as she paddled down, its little tongue flicking out between its lips (do snakes have lips?). So far, though, no snake has dared attack Rachel.

We were hiking up to Inspiration Point via the Twisted Ankle trail, a path on the edge of the River of Life Farm. The owners had told us that the path was only ¾ a mile up the hill, a hill which ended up having a steeper incline than we had originally expected. That meant that we took more rest breaks than this impatient hiker could bear. By the time someone suggested that we sit on a bench only two minutes after our third break, I decided to go along on my own.

I walked up to the edge of a switchback, which curved and went up an even steeper section of the hill. I was looking down at my tennis shoes—watching my step—when I tripped. And there, right in front of me, was a dark grey snake, sticking its long black tongue out and shaking its tail.

“Whoa!” I yelled. I panicked, stumbled backwards, and almost fell down the steep hill. As I’d seen it, I had two choices: step on the snake and get bitten, or roll down the hill and scrape up my legs. Fortunately, there was a sapling right beside me, so I grabbed it instead and dug my shoes into the ground. Then I hoisted myself back up to the path.

“Rachel, don’t come up here!” I called down.

By the time I recovered my balance, I found that the snake looked just about as scared of me as I was of it. It was moving its tail back and forth to freak me out, I figured. Dad rushed up behind me and immediately determined that the slithery thing wasn’t poisonous. I tried moving it out of the way with a stick, but Dad—with all of his outdoor know-how—was more successful. He tucked the stick under the serpent and—to Em’s dismay—threw it a little ways down in the woods.

Our more recent animal run-in has been a bit tamer. Wildlife isn’t the only breed of animal found out here, it seems.

When I woke up from a nap this evening, I found that Em and Dad had made another friend: Bo, a big black Labrador retriever with a slobbery mouth, a half-sawed tooth, and a terrible smell. He and Em had quickly developed a relationship of sorts, while the rest of the family watched.

“He just wandered up onto the deck,” said Mom. “He was in the river, and then he saw me looking down at him and must have thought that was an invitation to come up.”

Bo panted and came toward me. I patted his head, got a good whiff of him, and told him nicely to go away. He returned to Em, the true animal lover of the family who didn’t mind petting his rump and even occasionally detaching a tick or two from his body. Em had Rachel take twenty pictures of her with the black dog, which will probably serve as future reminders that he once invaded our porch.

The dog was not the smartest pup. I started making barking noises at one point and he looked off into the distance, thinking it was one of his canine friends calling to him from afar. Even the slobbery look on his face read unintelligent.

But there was something endearing about that big black ball of fur—up to a point, that is.

I went back into the house to grab a banana during the evening. When I came outside chomping on it, he put his rump down on the ground and started meacing. I laughed at him but threw him a bit of banana anyway. In one motion, I watched the banana go into his mouth and fall onto the ground. Then he walked over to Em, instinctively afraid that I would berate him for wasting a perfectly good piece of banana.

It is three hours later, and Bo is still sitting on our porch. We don’t know where his owners are, but I guess that doesn’t matter. For the time being, he’s keeping all the more foreign critters out of the house.

Maybe we should teach him how to ward off spiders, snakes, and mice too, just as a precaution.