When a nightmare nearly becomes a reality
That black stick that had fallen across the bike trail turned out not to be a stick, a fact I discovered just in time to lock up my brakes and avoid running over it.
The stick was a snake that had stopped to sun itself while crossing the path. I walked my bike backwards about 10 feet, just in case, and snapped a photo to send to my son who is not snake averse.
“That’s a rat snake,” he said, “basically a snake version of a bunny rabbit.”
Well, that’s not reassuring.
I have a somewhat recurrent snake nightmare in which, while pedaling fast, I see a long stick on the path ahead of me. Too late, I discover that is not a stick and I ride over it, startling the snake and causing it to wrap itself around my ankle. I jump off, disentangling my leg, but now discover the snake has threaded itself through the spokes of my bike.
That’s where I wake up, heart-pounding and sweaty.
“Not poisonous,” said my son, as if that would make me feel better.
Maybe I’m stating the obvious here, but if that dream were to play out in real life, I would not be inclined to ride that bike home with a snake on board. I would abandon ship and walk.
Meanwhile over in Austria, a man was bitten by a snake while sitting on his toilet. This exact scenario has long been the subject of urban legends and also my own nightmares, but apparently this really happened because I saw the photos of the snake: a fat yellow python five feet in length that somehow escaped from the apartment next door, probably entering through its own family toilet. It does make one wonder what kind of plumbing they have in Austria, where you share the pipes with the guy next door.
Also, who lets a snake that size just roam free around the apartment?
Whatever, that poor man who got nipped is going to be facing some serious therapy before he can comfortably use his own bathroom – or any bathroom- again. If that had happened to me, or had happened to any person in my own area code, I would move. The fear of snakes is primal and, except for a few outliers, universal.
It would be bad enough to run over a snake. Now that snakes are out sunning themselves on bike trails, my fear casts a bit of a shadow over every ride. Somebody once reported seeing a rattler on the Montour Trail, and last week I talked to a guy who said he and his dog once encountered a copperhead. This is why I make a point to never step into the grassy parts on the sides of the trial.
Who knows what slithery things await.
When I shared my concern about the bike-spoke thing, a friend said that would never happen – that running over a snake would kill it.
So I googled it. Here’s what google said:
“Often when a snake is hit by something, it will instinctively curl up its body. This can result in a snake getting tangled in the spokes of a bicycle wheel.”
So it’s not just my anxiety, or my bad dreams. This kind of snake encounter can really happen: they can grab you while you’re riding your bike, and they can crawl up and bite you when you least expect it.
Just ask that poor guy in Austria. Talk about nightmares.