Snakes in a Tent

I got into a conversation recently about Boy Scout summer camp. And, of course, if you ever have gone camping in Boy Scouts, you sometimes encounter a snake. So here’s my snake story:

Camp Jayhawk is located about thirty miles northeast of Topeka, very close to Lake Perry in Jefferson County. I’ve been to this summer facilities three times as a scout in the late 1970s. The first two years, our troop camped on the west side of Lake Jayhawk. The west side was the more luxurious side of the lake because we weren’t required to cook our own meals. We merely had to hike down three-quarters of a mile to the main cabin where breakfast, lunch, and dinner were ready. My third year we camped on the east side of the lake where we were required to cook our own meals and maintain the latrines.

The one thing that all camps had in common were the tents. The camp staff provided our tents and cot frames, but the tents themselves had no flooring So if we got out of bed in the middle of the night the first thing our feet hit was the ground.

Anyway, this third year of scout camp was the year of rain, rain, and even more rain. When we first arrived, we had no problems pitching our tents and establishing camp. It was just the fact for most of the week we found ourselves wearing rain gear. Our third night there was the most violent of the thunderstorms. A couple of thunderbolts struck Lake Jayhawk disturbing my slumber momentarily before I drifted back to sleep.

That following morning, I received instructions from my scoutmaster to get everyone up from bed. It was still raining so he shouted from his tent, probably hoping that I was awake. At the time, I was the Assistant Senior Patrol leader and the highest-ranking scout so getting the troop out of bed and ready for the day was one of my accountabilities.

So I got my clothes and raingear on and walked out of the tent and proceeded to wake the troop. But what I did not notice as I was walking out of the tent were the three snakes (two copperheads and a rattlesnake) that decided to use our tent as shelter from the rain. Apparently, they were coiled under my tent-mate’s bed.

It took me about twenty minutes to go through the camp and get everyone up. In the meantime, my tent-mate had his problems: one of the copperheads decided to climb up the cot and rest on his chest. He tried calling for the scoutmaster but, for obvious reasons, he did not want to provoke the snake. So his shouts were limited to loud whispers.

The scoutmaster did hear my tent-mate’s frantic whispers and was able to move not only the copperhead but also the other two snakes into the woods 200 yards away. When I returned to the tent, the scoutmaster and tent-mate had exhausted looks on their faces. After they took a minute to catch their breath, they told me what happened.