Speaking of snakes, I recently wrote a story for my six-year-old herpimanical great-neice about how my brothers and I had an Exploring Expedition to find the mouth of a local creek. Along the way there was a snake pit into which an earthquake nearly threw us. In the pit were snakes even we couldn't recognize! Hint: having boomslangs, king cobras, and puff adders in West Central Illinois may possibly have been a slight variation on the truth.