Carry on camping...

We went camping yesterday. The last of the semester's presentations got over yesterday and I was standing outside the lab taking deep breaths, gazing at the campus through the window and generally letting the feeling sink in. I met Dave there and he asked me if I would like to join him and his friends on a camping trip that day evening. It was a place about 40 minutes from Rolla. Well, why not...!!

We were off at 6:30 PM in David's car, armed with sleeping bags and other accessories. The road we took soon turned into a twisting hilly road, reminding me of the Ooty trips. Dave's friends had already arrived at the spot. As we entered the camping site, we were greeted by Dave's friend who came to us and said, "We killed a snake."

This black copperhead had taken its afternoon off and was lazily crawling around in the woods when it unfortunately encountered these guys setting up a camp. One of these guys had a .22 with them and was eager try it out on something other than empty coke cans. This snake was spotted by the one of the guys and they promptly shot it down.

"Its a black snake, atleast 5 feet long", Dave's friend was saying. When I saw the snake, it was not black anymore. It was pink. Only then I realized that they planned to eat it! ugh..!

I will not go into the details of that. But the general opinion after 1 hour was than snake was indeed quite tasty. As for me, I ate some potatoes and green pepper and some bread. Then, it was just the "around the fire chit-chat" till about 1:30 in the night. Then crash. I had some funny snake dream... ("It's moving...!"), but I can't recollect much now. We were back in to Rolla at 9 in the morning. Nice start to summer holidays...