LOL yeah this is the American south...Things you will find in a cave/on the way hiking to a cave:
Rattlers, copperheads..copperheads in particular can be rather aggressive...would NOT want to step over around or near one hah! And then the spiders, brown recluse and black widows most common poisonous ones. Not to mention the pesky things like chiggers (make you itch to the high heavens) and ticks (ew ew ew, best case find them before biting in, worst case find them after and it was a dear tick and need to worry about lyme disease).
But lots of cool wildlife too...lots of bats of various species (tricolours, little brown, big brown, gray, etc etc), cave adapted crawfish, various salamander species some very brightly coloured.
Mainly I run into ticks and copperheads though, Copperheads live in and around rocky areas so if you have a rocky spot there are copperheads around. Carry a walking stick to poke ahead of you so you dont step on one traipsing in the woods in-cave only an issue near the entrances (they'll sit and try and catch bats flying out and such) and in open-air pits that they somehow make their way or fall into and then just live there.
When rappelling one of the jobs of the first one down (besides the standard making sure rope reaches the bottom and then untying the stopper knots and padding any areas that are needed to stop rope rub) is to check for snakes!
Rattlers, copperheads..copperheads in particular can be rather aggressive...would NOT want to step over around or near one hah! And then the spiders, brown recluse and black widows most common poisonous ones. Not to mention the pesky things like chiggers (make you itch to the high heavens) and ticks (ew ew ew, best case find them before biting in, worst case find them after and it was a dear tick and need to worry about lyme disease).
But lots of cool wildlife too...lots of bats of various species (tricolours, little brown, big brown, gray, etc etc), cave adapted crawfish, various salamander species some very brightly coloured.
Mainly I run into ticks and copperheads though, Copperheads live in and around rocky areas so if you have a rocky spot there are copperheads around. Carry a walking stick to poke ahead of you so you dont step on one traipsing in the woods
in-cave only an issue near the entrances (they'll sit and try and catch bats flying out and such) and in open-air pits that they somehow make their way or fall into and then just live there. When rappelling one of the jobs of the first one down (besides the standard making sure rope reaches the bottom and then untying the stopper knots and padding any areas that are needed to stop rope rub) is to check for snakes!
