Snakes, Sig, and Darkness in the Swamp

1.

"DO NOT MOVE, RICH. DO NOT MOVE. I'm serious. Do not move." Travis repeated , quietly this time.

"Ah, shit..." I thought. "What now? Is he jerking my chain?"

We were deep in the Everglades, part of a six man team mapping shell mounds and groundtruthing potential human habitation sites dating back hundreds, even thousands, of years.

Somewhat disgusted, I whined, "Alright...what's going on? Why am I not moving?" I was standing before a transit, shooting ranges while Travis took notes.

Steve was on the mound with a stadia rod, moving from point to point as we mapped the topography of the mound.

" Well, if you're interested, you have a si​​x-foot diamondback crawling underneath the transit and he's about to slide between your legs. Not moving seems like a wise choice right now."

Travis' tone was calm enough to make me an instant believer. It also allowed me to react calmly as well. I lowered my gaze and saw the longest, fattest rattler I had ever seen. It's body was as thick as my calf and he was sinuously and slowly moving as if I wasn't even an afterthought. He passed beneath the tripod and between my legs. I let him move a bit farther down the track before I moved at all.

"Damn," I muttered. "What the hell am I doing here?"

Travis smiled and smirked, "Another day of doing government science..."

2.

The year was 1983. Water level in the Everglades was abnormally high. Even though snake sightings were more rare than usual when compared to other years, snakes were a definite theme that season. We were living off the "famed" Loop Road

, of Al Capone infamy, and staying in a trailer on the property of Fred and Sandy Dayhoff, both legends in Everglades lore.

I got up early one February morning for a quick stroll on the Loop Road outside the Dayhoff compound. Fred was already up, so I wandered over for a quick chat.

We had barely started our conversation, when Fred looked down the road and, "Shit! Look at that rattler! He's a big one!"

I looked down the road, maybe 100 yards or more. I saw what might have been a fallen branch lying in the middle of the road.

"How do you know that's a rattler at this distance?" I asked.

"I know! Get in the truck. We got to move him. He could be a problem for the students that come to Sandy's weekend camps."

We jumped in the truck and rode out to see Mr. No Shoulders. It was a rattler alright, at least four feet long and sunning himself in the middle of the road on that cool winter morning.

Fred found and grabbed a large branch and shoved it under the rattler, hoping to scoop it into the bed of the truck, but it squirmed and twisted and resisted until Fred finally flung it up into the air. It came down with a loud SPLAT! - and lay there, seemingly stunned. The scooping, flipping and resisting had carried us another 50-60 yards from the truck.

Fred handed me the branch and said, "Keep him from the water. Don't let 'em get away."

Before I could protest, Fred bolted for the truck. I would have preferred that role. Nevertheless, the rattler just lay there, stunned, wondering what the hell he had gotten into.

Fred brought the truck closer, grabbed the branch from me and skillfully maneuvered the meditating reptile into the bed of his truck. Fred was physically drained. I was emotionally drained, so we caught our collective breath and renewed our previous discussion. In the process, Fred stated that he would move the snake at least 20 miles away and release him there.

"A snake that large could cause some serious problems for Sandy and the kids."

The sun had risen higher and the temperature was heating up, including the road, the two of us and the bed of the truck. Greg, one of my teammates, strolled up to us, stuck his head over the truck bed and asked, "What's in the truck?"

Fred pulled Greg back and growled, "Get the hell away from there!"

At that moment, a horrible buzzing and rattling sound emanated from the heated truck bed and when I glanced inside, the meditating rattler had become a huge, cocked fist, ready to defend its new metal-based territory.

Fred drove away with his new friend and successfully transferred him to, theoretically, a new home base. Rattlers have a tendency to establish approximately a one square mile area of operations. But as Fred had driven off, I remember thinking, " you're a better man than I am, Fred Dayhoff." There was no way I envied him his chosen task that day.

3.

Even Fred has had his moments. He confessed that his greatest fear was searching through a palmetto outcropping and being struck in the face by a rattler. On the wall of his home, is a snakeskin of a giant 10-foot rattler. Fred's story details an account amongst the palmettos wherein this 10-footer punched him in his thigh with its "face", in the process, cracking his femur.

" It felt like being smashed with a baseball bat at full force! My leg buckled and I got real weak. When I saw what hit me, I figured I got bit. I was shaken, but I drew my gun and shot him in the head with snake shot. Now, he decorates my wall. He's not Sandy's favorite wall hanging."

After killing the snake, Fred struggled to load the remains into his truck bed. He drove himself to the hospital for treatment. Fred said that mature snakes will often dry-bite (no venom) or simply punch you to warn you away as did this one. The youngsters usually give their "victim" a full shot.

4.

Mike was one of my teammates during that '83 Everglades season. Several times we were paired together to recon gumbo limbo hammocks and sawgrass "savannah-like" plains. He was a much more experienced "outdoor" person than I was and was a bit of a "conflicted" redneck. We had our issues and a major point of emotional discontinuity was his passion for the Rebel flag. Nevertheless, over time we worked out our differences and became close friends. A year later, Mike would put his woodworking skills to my benefit as he designed and constructed a great bookshelf system for the loggia of my new house.

On one occasion, we were walking through a sawgrass field, water at perfect crotch level. Our snake chaps parted at that critical location leaving us potentially vulnerable to the strike of the underslung villain, the moccasin. I was on point when Mike called out, "Let me take the lead from here."

I had taken issue with Mike about his work on point since he had an unfailing desire to pick up sluggish pygmy rattlers which, in the cool winter season, were attempting to absorb some sunlight and warmth to heat up their cold-blooded selves which would allow them to hunt more effectively. These pygmies were everywhere, but, largely immobile and generally uninterested on bipedal lumberers like us. We would conduct our archeological science, virtually surrounded by these beady-eyed reptiles, but they

never acted threatened, so neither did we. They seemed to be studying our behavior like really good students, staring in wonder at our marvelous expertise, and absorbing every move in their deep-seeded reptilian intellect However, after being safely held in Mike's warm-blooded fist for fifteen minutes or so, they had absorbed enough of his heat to get really pissed off. Once they started to squirm, Mike would carefully place them down on our narrow path, leaving me to negotiate my tread around a highly active, annoyed and newly aggressive noodle of venomous rage. After several episodes of dodging these guys, I insisted that "city boy" would walk point and leave the "redneck" to his own designs, behind and at a safe distance.

Again, Mike called out. "Wait up. I'm taking point." He was emphatic.

I stopped, turned around and queried, "What is the problem? You don't like the specific path I'm taking through the sawgrass? There is no path, we're making our own."

"Yeah, but you obviously are leading us into trouble. You don't smell that moccasin?" Mike asked authoritatively.

" No. What moccasin? Are you Natty Bumppo or some Marlin Perkins guy? What are you talking about?"

"We got at least one moccasin up ahead. You're walking right up on him. Let me get us past him, then you can take point again until you get us in more trouble."

He seemed sincere, so I relented. We didn't get far and as we had veered to our left (east), we spotted a large, fat water moccasin sunning itself on a bed of flattened sawgrass, suspended above an open area of water, just relaxing and overseeing his domain. Finally, the strong, musky scent hit my nostrils and I realized that not only had Mike been absolutely correct, but his tiny, upturned nose was much more effective than

my relatively large proboscis in sorting out the kind of smells that could lead us either into or out of trouble. My respect for Mike's field sense leapt exponentially and we made a pact about walking point and avoiding unnecessary conflict/contact with our reptilian brethren.

5.

Another major character that became part of our team was a serious legend in Everglades lore, Sig Walker. Sig had originally been a field agent, but, over time, had turned major league gator poacher, moonshiner and lawbreaker supreme. The federal government had banned him from ever entering the Everglades or Big Cypress for the remainder of his life. He had been the head of a large organization of gator poachers and moonshiners

that forever had evaded capture by the officers mandated to put him and his cronies out of business. But, he had a friend and colleague at Everglades National Park, equally a local legend in Fred Dayhoff.

Our team stayed at the Dayhoff compound and he was our primary contact and advisor throughout the 1983 season. We would be moving deep into the Everglades and Big Cypress, deeper than humans had gone for a long time and we needed a guide with magical experience. Fred told us, "There's only one guy with that know-how - Sig Walker."

And Fred was the one guy that could make that happen. Sig was a legitimate

combination of Everglades Dan'l Boone and Davy Crockett. He was a natural in the "River of Grass"... and he loved the idea that he would be revisiting his old stomping grounds - the places that enabled him to build his legend. In the mid to late fifties there was a TV show called (Lincoln Vale of) "The Everglades!" Sig was the stunt man/stand-in for Ron Hayes, the star of the program, for stunts and airboat maneuvers.

Sig and I developed our fractious relationship early on. Once he heard I was a "Jersey guy," he immediately labeled me a tree-hugging, gator-loving liberal. My Vietnam experience tempered the rough edges. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but respect this guy who had built a legitimate legend in what has to be one of the more hostile environments in the country. He also displayed a seriously honorable code of respect and behavior even towards the people who had been out to close down his livelihood. At one point, a wildlife officer specifically tasked to "take down" Sig,

"...suffered a crack-up that left him stranded far from civilization and

desperate for shelter. He found it at Walker's own secluded camp. Walker later led a contingent of fellow Gladesmen into the swamp to repair (his) boat for him..." (Everglades Patrol, Tom Shirley 2012).

One day, while we were riding with Sig in his airboat, Sig halted to get a better sense of our location and to better plot our next survey target. I looked out and saw what appeared to be a water moccasin ripping through the water at unnatural speed. My naive self caught Sig's attention and I confessed that I had no idea that snakes could move that swiftly in a straight line and with their heads out of the water.

"That's 'cause you're a Yankee dumb ass." Sig muttered matter of factly. "Watch him for a moment. He's fighting for his life. A gator has him in his jaws."

At that moment, the gator's head broke the surface, and, sure enough, the moccasin was striking at its head trying to get free. The gator and the snake sunk beneath the surface leaving a vigorous wake and we never saw either again.

Sig laughed and said, "You've sure got a lot to learn out here, little buddy." Sig was well over 6 feet tall so I didn't take offense at his " little" reference.

Later that evening, the team was relaxing back at Fred Dayhoff's compound. The beer was flowing and Sig had at least a full pouch of Redman crammed in his mouth. He was wearing shorts and I noticed an ice cream scoop sized divot taken out of his right calf.

"What the hell is that little scar you have on your calf, Sig?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah...a moccasin caught me unawares back in the day. We used to just slap a tourniquet on it and keep goin'. The big ones don't give you a lotta juice. I guess this one gave me the full load. I started hallucinatin' and passed out in my boat. I woke up next mornin' and lost a chunk of tissue. Learned a lesson that day."

"I guess learning lessons out here is serious and painful business, huh Sig?" I questioned with a smile.

" You can count on that. Just remember that. You still have some time left on this little adventure of yours." Sig smiled and winked? It wouldn't be long before Sig's ominous and foreshadowing wink led to a reality check.

Another day, cruising in Sig's airboat, Sig spotted a diamondback swimming casually through that season's high water.

Sig yelled down to us, "Watch this!"

He spun the airboat in ever narrowing circles around the rattler. The snake was quite large, at least 4 1/2 feet long and fat and, now, angry. Amazingly, it coiled and settled in to threatening mode. Sig shut down the engine and moved next to the buzzing reptile.

"Oh, is he pissed!" laughed Sig. "I'm gonna piss him off just a little bit more."

He then stuck his arm about a foot or so near the coiled rattler's fearsome head. The lightning fast strike caused the snake's body to shoot straight back, his fangs no closer to Sig's wrist than when he first unleashed the strike. The diamondback, recoiled and struck again. Same result.

"Dumb ass can't get no purchase!" Sig howled. "Can't get no purchase. Water's too deep."

Sig restarted his engine and left the rattler in his wake, still coiled, and, obviously, still pissed. Sig's reference to the snake's personal status seemed to put me and Mr. No Shoulders at about the same caste level.

Our most serious event involving Sig left the snakes behind but our relationship took a sour turn and involved a certain level of irony and a haunting look back at his ominous "wink." Two of our teams played major roles with Sig as both protagonist and antagonist. Ironically, the primary locales were Sig Walker Mound and Sig's own fish camp, the very one referred to earlier as a refuge for a wild life officer.

As we moved deeper into spring, the weather began to heat up and the insect pests became more of an issue. Sig was scheduled to drop Travis and me onto a hammock that Sig had marked as his own a quarter of a century earlier. Playing the role of his swamp man version of Dan'l Boone, Sig had carved into the trunk of a large gumbo limbo tree, "Sig Walker kill'd 12 foot gator on this spot ...1953." The lettering was crude and become warped over time but the message was still decipherable.

After dropping us off, Sig took Mike and Greg to their assigned location. The plan was for Sig to pick us up around 3 pm and then grab Mike and Greg and return us to base before dark. Travis and I completed our recon and sample gathering and as 3 pm approached, we relaxed and awaited Sig's arrival. We both became a bit nervous as 3 pm came and went and the sun began to drop. Sig and his airboat could be neither seen nor heard. Travis and I looked at each other and our stomachs sank at the same time.

"He's not coming..." Travis mumbled. "Shit! We have no overnight gear. We're gonna get eaten alive by the skeets at least. We better start gathering wood for a fire. That and a mud slurry oughtta keep some of the critters at bay for a while anyway. I don't know how long we can bathe ourselves in smoke, but bug juice and mud won't cut it overnight."

Nervously, we started piling up scrap wood and leaves, our attitudes turning dark along with the evening light.

As depression raced with frustration and anger for ascendancy in our minds, we heard a series of sickly, staccato grunts that startled both of us.

"Not a bull gator..." ripped through my mind.

"Sig?" queried Travis hopefully but uncertain.

"Doesn't sound right," I said.

The stuttering cough increased in volume and was followed by a crash in the underbrush and in staggered Sig Walker, off balance in both mind and body.

"You motherfuckers, get in the boat..." he slurred.

It was getting dark and our momentary elation was stifled by Sig's rage and aggressive attitude.

"Motherfuckers hit me and the boat, flipped us over and took off. I can't get more 'n two knots out of the damn thing. Engine's screwed. Get in there and let's get outta here!"

Was he hurt, or had he been drinking? The story sounded lame. As deep as we were in the swamp, there shouldn't have been anyone else out there. We climbed into Sig's boat and it was evident, serious damage had been done. Travis and I climbed into our seats, glad to be headed home, but confused about the situation and Sig's ugly mood. As we sputtered away, the damage became both more obvious and more alarming. Sig hadn't been kidding. He could barely manage two knots an hour. We were barely moving. We had a long way to go and we still had to pick up Mike and Greg.

For Travis and me, we had no clue as to where we were geographically. We were totally in Sig's hands as this territory was his. We couldn't recognize any "landmarks", as, for the most part, there were none. We were processing the confusion of our status when we suddenly realized we were pulling up to a crude, dilapidated dock and a screened in wooden building that loomed out of the swamp foliage. It turned out to be Sig's personal fish camp. We weren't going home after all. The sky had darkened significantly and the hum of the skeets had risen dramatically.

The three of us clambered into the screened in cabin and Sig lost his mind, screaming and slamming the limited furniture in the single room. He was almost unintelligible.

"I'm gonna kill you fuckin' guys! I should never agreed to this stupid idea. I'll kill Fred. He dragged me into this."

Fred had been friends with Sig for decades, long before he had become helicopter pilot for Everglades National Park.

Sig pulled out his enormous knife. " I'm gonna kill you both after I fix my goddam engine. You got no place to go!"

" What about Mike and Greg?" I asked, pissed off myself and trying to refocus Sig in his rage. I couldn't believe he was seriously going to act out his crazed threats. "They aren't prepared to spend the night. They'll get eaten alive out there. You know that!"

"Fuck 'em. I'm done...and fuck you, too!"

With that, Sig slammed the screen door and disappeared near the end of the dock. He had jumped into his airboat, leaving Travis and me to sort out the extent of our burgeoning crisis.

"He's crazy! He'll kill us!" Travis snapped. "We've got no place to go. He's crazy pissed. He's nuts! He's drunk! He'll do it!"

"Hey! He's just upset. He's old. Let's calm down and try to calm him down..." I said sitting on the bunk.

"God damn it!" Shouted Sig as he nearly ripped the door off its hinges. "I'll kill you! I'll kill Fred..."

Sig rushed through the door holding his knife in his right hand, blood pouring on to the floor from his left.

" What the fuck, Sig?" I yelled. "What have you fucking done? You're gonna bleed to death for Chrissake!"

" I fucked up, that's what! An' I'm gonna fuck you up, too!"

"Hold on, Sig! Calm down. We need to fix that hand. Let me take a look at it. We need to stop that bleeding right now," I pleaded.

Sig stopped and caught his breath. " Oh, yeah! You're the Vietnam guy, aren't you? You can fix this, right?"

" Yeah. Come on over here. Put the goddam knife down. You've got a med kit here or on the boat, don't you?"

" Yeah. There's stuff under the bed..." Sig was beginning to slow down. He placed the knife on the table in the middle of the room and slumped down on the bed. He'd almost completely severed his damn thumb.

I started wrapping the wound with gauze, but the blood kept pouring on the floor.

"Hold your hand up high, over your head..." I commanded.

Sig followed suit, but with little energy. He seemed weak and utterly compliant. I finished wrapping his thumb with gauze and grabbed a stray roll of duct tape. Nothing else was at hand. Bottom line - no blood leaked out of the elephantine club I had created out of his left hand. Sig was dazed, but grateful.

"I think you got it," he stated uneasily. "Let's go get your buds."

It was closing in on two in the morning and Travis volunteered. "You guys go ahead. I'll clean up this mess."

"Yeah," I thought. If Sig decides to turn me into a gator feast by dropping me over the side, you've bought yourself a little more time...Oh, well..."

It wasn't necessarily a smart decision, but I thought that maybe Sig and I had bonded, at least temporarily , and keeping him active and occupied might eschew any dramatic mood swings. And by agreeing with his newfound strategy, we might solidify our "bond."

"Let's go," I said. " How's your boat? Did you get the engine fixed?"

"Nah! I cut my fuckin' thumb off tryin' to make a gasket for the carb. It's not far. We can get there at two per."

And off we went. Mindless chatter focused on how close we could get to the abandoned pair and what condition they would be in when we found them.

Finally, Sig "slowed" his airboat and said, "this is as close as I can get. It's probably not close enough."

I called out to the guys, and the wind had picked up, heading in their direction. The problem was, I couldn't hear any response. I thought I might be able to get closer if I left the boat and struck out towards the hammock that I thought I could sense in the distance.

"I'll try to get closer. I think I can reach them..." I stated hopefully.

" My God, you are a Yankee dumb ass," snarled Sig. He flipped on his "gig" light and swept the beam across the swamp. A thousand red pin dots lit up the area. "You assholes think those fuckers are endangered, " Sig laughed. " You're gonna be the most endangered critter out here tonight." He laughed again. "Get your sorry ass back in here. Skeets are pickin' up again. Your boys are screwed. We'll come back and get 'em at first light."

As I stared at the red light show, pixilated like a dark Seurat painting, I realized just how naive I had been. Sig was right. I had no clue what Big Cypress was like at night. Sig was the expert. Like Androcles and the lion, our relationship had shifted, temporarily. But Sig was back in form. He was the boss and we headed back to his fish camp.

The next morning, the three of us headed out to pick up Mike and Greg. On the way, we ran into Fred tooling through the swamp in his airboat. He'd figured out that there had been a problem and had already picked up the two strays. Mike and Greg looked miserable and in major discomfort. They were covered in red, yellow and greenish blue lumps. We reconnoitered and Fred looked at a more light-hearted Sig and asked, "What the hell is that at the end of your left arm? It looks like a damn club."

"My team doctor fixed it up. He's a real expert, isn't he?" Sig laughed.

"Yeah, an expert at what?" Fred snorted.

"An expert Yankee!" Sig drove his point home.

Things hadn't changed that much for good ole Androcles, after all. At least "Yankee" was now a noun, not just an adjective modifying a pejorative.