Eel on a Wheel
Category: Nature...
Posted Friday, June 20, 2008 at 03:21 PM [GMT-6]

OK, first let me apologize for the post title. I was attempting to riff off Snakes on a Plane, and obviously grew desperate. I'm still kicking myself (which, by the way, is quite painful, whether you connect or not) for failing to come up with "Snakes on a Plain" for a serpent-related post that I wrote not long after the movie was released; a reader suggested that title.

Now, where were we? Oh, I know. Remember that scene in the excellent Breaking Away where Dave had caught up to the Cinzano cycling team during a road race, and to express their ire at being schooled by an American kid, one of the Italian riders stuck a tire pump through Dave's front wheel, sending him head over heels, ending his race (and his reverence for the foreign racers)? Well, it could have been worse. Those Italians could have been toting snakes!

I waited until things dried up a bit before going for a ride this afternoon, and while cruising the streets of a new undeveloped neighborhood about a mile from our house, I came across this four-foot-long bull snake stretched across the asphalt. I braked in front of him and snapped a couple of photos with my phone, at which point he grew tired of the hoopla and resumed his journey. My bike's front wheel posed no obstacle for him.

I can't see a darned thing on my phone's viewfinder in bright sunlight, so I pointed and shot hoping that I was somewhere in the neighborhood as the snake slithered through the spokes. As luck would have it, of the half dozen shots I took, the most interesting one also turned out the best.