Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

On Reflection, Toads Seem Like Better Company

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Revie

The toad was an omen.

The amphibian infiltrator was peering into my wife’s eyes as she woke from our first night of camping at Lake Roosevelt.

“Richard!” Meredith yelled from the tent. It wasn’t clear whether she thought the toad was me, or whether she was alarmed by a stranger.

I braced for the worst. For as long as I can remember, people have used my full first name only as a preface to giving me hell.

“Did you do this?” she demanded, pointing to the toad perched on the corner of her sleeping bag.

I was shocked. With two 14-year-old boys tenting on one side of us, two 12-year-old girls on the other side and two 8-year-old girls nearby, it didn’t seem like I should be the prime suspect.

“You don’t have to blame me,” I told her. “Blame Ryan and Justin. That’s what teenagers are for.”

Meredith was a little edgy, but in retrospect, this was the beginning of fairly normal camping trip for the Landers family. Combined with friends Chuck and Lisa Hartshorn and their kids, the camp first-aid kit had been used at least four times in the first 24 hours,

We managed to go fishing without impaling a hook in anyone’s leg. But Meredith did minor surgery to remove a splinter from Lisa’s hand. The laceration on Hillary’s knee required swabbing with Betadine. So did the gash on Cheryl’s toe.

We applied ice to Chuck’s toe after the boat crushed it against the dock. Benadryl was on hand when Cheryl and Hillary were nailed by yellowjackets.

On a morning hike, we managed to usher every kid and the dog around a huge patch of poison ivy. But Brittney slipped on a steep slope and plopped her hand square on the stickery head of a thistle. Not to be outdone by her 8-year-old companion, Hillary shuffled her sneakers through a patch of prickly-pear cactus.

The hike involved about an hour of actual walking and 3 hours of plucking.

We may be the only family that goes on a four-day camping trip with a first-aid kit larger than the food box.

If we left a few splints and eye patches out, we might have room for a little beer and bait, I thought.

On the other hand, we had hydrocortisone cream for Brook when she broke out in a reaction to the sunscreen. Sterile irrigating solution was in the bag in case one of the kids poked a marshmallow roasting stick in somebody’s eye.

Watching the boys do aerial antics off cliffs, the adults recognized that even Meredith’s industrial-size first-aid kit was not going to be adequate for injuries the teenagers were likely to sustain.

“What are the chances of getting a helicopter evacuation out here?” Meredith wondered.

Medically speaking, we felt pretty well covered until Meredith reached into one of the camp kitchen boxes.

“Richard,” she said, as I braced for another barrage of false accusations. “I think we have a problem.”

“That’s not a problem,” I said, looking over her shoulder. “It’s a young rattlesnake.”

We marveled at the little rascal’s audacity to invade our camp and it’s inability to make noise, even though it coiled and shook its budding rattle.

Then I carted the boxed reptile down the beach a quarter mile and let it go. Problem is, where there’s one young rattlesnake, there’s likely to be more, a hunch confirmed when one squiggled out from under the plastic basin while Chuck was washing dishes.

Reflecting on our predicament, we realized we had enough medical supplies to deal with everything up to nuclear war with one notable exception: No snakebite venom extractor kit.

Wilderness medical experts say the extractors can help if used in the first 30 seconds or so after a snakebite.

“You know, if a toad can get into our tent, a snake would have no problem,” Meredith pointed out.

There’s a positive spin to all of this, of course.

The pairs of 8-year-olds and 12-year-olds who didn’t want to have anything to do with each other at the start of the trip suddenly wanted to buddy up and sleep together - on the boat.

Brook, my 12-year-old daughter, who hasn’t needed her dad for anything but money and transportation for the past year or so, asked me to accompany her on quick trips to the latrine after she spotted a third rattler on the trail through the sage.

And she even said, “Please.”

By clearing out debris, keeping lids on boxes, and turning over a log that had provided a perfect lair for snakes, we managed to coexist safely with the reptiles.

The story horrifies some of our friends. But not another family we enjoy as camping companions.

“Snakes are easy to deal with when you think about it,” said Jack Brooks, whose family members thought last year’s grizzly bear encounter was intense until they recently came up against the scariest of all camp pests in Nevada.

“Skunks,” he said. “They were all over, and you can’t do a thing about them.”

, DataTimes MEMO: You can contact Rich Landers by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5508.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review

You can contact Rich Landers by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5508.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review