It was a sunny, beautiful Michigan day on Saturday, so I set off with my daughter for a morning of geocaching. I had picked up a Travelbug when geocaching in North Carolina, so I needed to keep it moving and it had been a few weeks since I had it. I talked my daughter into going with me (it's much more fun to go with others), and we set off to the Proud Lake Recreation Area.
The first geocache we searched for, we never found... and we set off for another, not too far down the trail. We arrived at the general area and started to look in likely spots. Soon, my daughter shrieked and screamed, "There's a snake over here!" I went over to see it; I am not afraid of snakes (I used to have several of them as pets). The snake looked to me like a python, although pythons do not live in Michigan. It wasn't moving, either; so we thought it might be dead. We left it be and continued our search. After about 15 minutes of searching, I found myself curious to see if the darn snake had moved. It was still in the same exact spot. So, what does the science teacher (who knows better) do? She pokes it with a stick. IT'S ALIVE. Although it didn't move much, it moved. I took a picture and we moved on to for our third attempt. This time, we scored, so we left the travelbug, signed the log, and headed home.
Later that evening, I began to research strategies to identify snakes, and didn't have much luck in figuring out what kind of snake it was. I posted my photo to Plurk and asked my PLN if anyone could help identify it. It wasn't but a few minutes, when Ginger had it figured out. It was a Eastern Massasuaga Rattlesnake, the only poisonous snake in Michigan. "The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is currently evaluating the Great Lakes population to determine whether it should be listed as a threatened species. In Michigan, it remains an important part of our natural history." There is a reporting form on the state of Michigan's website, so I filled it out.
I'm fairly new to geocaching, but am really enjoying it. It has gotten me out to experience beautiful nature that I didn't even know existed... and finding a rattlesnake was pretty cool.
Why don't I know about Geocaching??? Is it like letterboxing??
ReplyDeleteRenee, I hadn't heard of Letterboxing, so I just googled it. Yes, sounds similar. Geocaching requires the use of a handheld GPS to find specific latitute & longitude coordinates. It is a world-wide sport/hobby - I think it started in the UK. Go to http://www.geocaching.org. You can plug in your address and search for nearby caches. There are 400 within 10 miles of my home. When you go on vacation, you can find the "gems" of the area by doing it. I learned about it last summer at the Discovery Institute. It's being used by teachers and schools. Now that I know what it is, we can talk more about possibilities of bringing it into our science and social studies classrooms to help teach the GLCEs. I plan to write a grant to at least get a small set as a start.
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