This weekend was an extra long one. Ascension Day is a national holiday in Norway and since it's stupid to have a day off on Thursday and go back to work Friday we've just gone and made Friday a day off as well. At least for schools. That's awesome and I'm not complaining! Who doesn't love some days off?
We spend Friday in one of my favorite ways possible, out and about in nature. This time the woods were on the menu. We have a big awesome forest just a wee bus ride from where we live. We've been there once before but that was before we started Geocaching. Since there was eight Geocaches hidden there we decided it was time to go back.
If you don't know what Geocaching is you can read more about it in this post.
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Eight total finds!
Eight finds! That's a huge haul for us! Since we don't have a car we can't just drive from cache to cache so finding eight caching in a day is quite a rare thing. Most of the time we travel to an area and we fint 2-5 caches but sometimes we visit goldmines like these.
They were all traditional caches that were easy to find except for one. I had solved a mystery cache some time ago that had its final location here in the woods. We went to the spot, not knowing if it was the right location or not, and started looking. There were no hints or any indication of where the cache was. Just a whole bunch of holes in the ground. We looked for a while and was about to give up when I decided I was just gonna check one last time under some moss. There it was! I'm so glad I did that last check.
What was a bit of a shame however was that most of the caches in the forest seems to be poorly maintained. All of them except two were soaking wet. We did what we could to drain them and do some field maintenance but most were beyond saving. We just put the lid back on and logged the cache online while notifying the owner.
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There's snakes in that grass!
We spent most of our time on the trail and only stepped slightly off it to find a cache every now and then. For the sixth cache though we had to go way off trail and into the bush. Our trusty compass led the way so navigating was no issue. It was mostly flat terrain anyways.
Now I know there's snakes in this area and I was keeping a keen eye on the ground for the most part. However when we were about 30 meters from the cache I became so focused on getting to the cache I forgot all about the snakes. All of a sudden I hear my girlfriend scream behind me and yell "SNAKE!!!".
She was one step away from stepping on it and I myself must have stepped right over it. He was like two meters behind me in the dead middle of my path. I think snakes are awesome so for me this was just great. Their scaly skins make up for such nice patterns. I was just standing there smiling and admiring him while my girlfriend was screaming.
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This lil' fella is a common viper. In Norway we call them "hoggorm". They're quite common around here and they live in most woods and swampy areas, feeding off mice and frogs. They're easily identifiable by their zig zaggy pattern on their back. It's barely visible in my picture.
The viper is one of two common snakes we have in Norway and the only venomous one. Luckily though they're not highly venomous. I remember reading somewhere that viper related deaths only occur once every 10 years or so. On average 250 people get bitten every year in Norway. More people die from being stung på wasps or bees.
The viper is one of three types of snakes found in Norway. We also have smooth snakes (slettsnok) and grass snakes (buorm). I haven't had the pleasure of seeing any of these two in the wild. None of them live in my part of the country whereas the viper lives in pretty much all of Norway except way up North. We also have slow worms which many mistake for a snake but is actually a lizard by definition, although it has no legs.
Below you an see two vipers we've met before. You can really see the zig zaggy pattern in them.
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This one is probably the biggest I've ever met. Vipers get around 60cm long but some females can become close to a meter long. This one had to be a female. This one we also met while searching for a geocache. My girlfriend was heading over to look between some rocks and saw this gal instead. We turned around for a while and when we turned back she was gone. It's safe to say we didn't go looking for the cache between those rocks.
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I've never met a viper with this prominent of a pattern. It's a good thing he was so white because this was also one I was about to step on. Because of his stark contrast to the ground I just caught a glimpse of him in my peripheral and was able to stop just in time.
And thus ends this small lesson about Norwegian fauna centered on snakes.
It's in moments like these I wish a had a proper camera. I have an iPhone 11 Pro Max so I get some decent photos even when zoomed in but I really wish I could get some high resolution detailed pictures of these guys. As you can see my snake photos aren't exactly top quality. Oh well. One day.
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