Spotting watersnake changes plan, but cannot ruin joy of day spent outdoors

TIMEWELL, Ill. — Elise Bethel jumped out of her dad’s truck and rushed toward the lake, bouncing past some wildflowers and chasing after a butterfly she’d never catch.

Jack Bethel smiled.

“It couldn’t have been a more perfect moment,” he said.

While his daughter dashed after the yellow butterfly, Bethel and his 12-year-old son, Ethan, dropped the tailgate and collected their fishing gear. Ethan grabbed the two rods and a tackle box, while Jack slung the straps of three bag chairs over his shoulder and lifted a cooler packed with drinks and sandwiches.

They followed Elise toward the lake at the Buckhorn Unit of Siloam Springs State Park, dropped everything on a level spot and began getting their gear prepped.

“I wanted to catch a big catfish,” Ethan said. “I even brought stink bait.”

Their lines had been in the water about 10 minutes or so when they heard 9-year-old Elise shriek and come running.

She yelled one word over and over.

“Snake,” she screamed.

Unafraid of snakes, Ethan set his fishing rod down and raced to see what caused his sister to freak out.

A moment later, he came running back.

“It’s huge,” he told his dad. “It’s a monster.”

Jack sent the kids to the truck while he investigated. He saw a stretch in the grass where a snake had slithered across, but there was no sign of the “monster” his son described. As he walked back to their gear, he noticed a large dark object creating small waves on the top of the water.

Immediately, he knew what his kids had seen.

It was a watersnake.

“Harmless,” said Jack, who suggested the snake was about 2 ½ feet long, not the 5-footer his son claimed it was. “Those are common around here and non-venomous. There was nothing to worry about, but try telling that to a 9-year-old who is scared of snakes. For her, that was essentially a black mamba or a king cobra. She didn’t want to go back toward the water.”

His son had a different take.

“I wanted to use my fishing pole and hook to try to catch it,” Ethan said. “I wanted to take it home. That thing had to be 5 feet long”

He may have had ulterior motives, too.

“I would have tried to scare her with it,” Ethan said with a hearty laugh.

Instead, the Bethels packed up their gear and decided to head into Siloam Springs for a picnic lunch. There were no snakes in the picnic area they chose, although they couldn’t avoid another interaction with wildlife.

A whitetail deer — Jack Bethel said it appeared to be a doe about a year or two old — calmly strolled out of the woods no more than 30 feet from the picnickers and began eating grass. The Bethels quietly watched the deer carry on uninterrupted until a car came by and made a loud noise.

The deer turned and dashed back into the woods, never to be seen again.

“I told my dad she needed to get bigger before a hunter could take her,” Ethan said. “She was pretty small.”

Elise wasn’t concerned with the whitetail’s size.

“She was really pretty,” the girl said. “I wanted to feed her.”

That didn’t happen, but it made what could have been considered a wasted day nearly perfect.

“Best day ever,” Elise said. “I love being outdoors.”