Pink snake on Great Lake causes big debate
I saw a hot pink snake.
He was beautiful, gliding along the shoreline of Lake Michigan. Hot pink spots dotted his bumpy coral skin. I couldn’t take my eyes off his wet, writhing body.
Yes, I should have pulled out my cell phone and snapped a photo. But that’s hard to do when you’re mesmerized. As soon as the snake dunked under the water, I pushed my new sunglasses up on my nose and ran to tell others what I’d seen.
“He was hot pink!” I told my husband and son, who were hanging out a ways down the shoreline. We were on vacation in Door County, Wisconsin, at the time, waiting for a ferry to arrive.
“Hot pink?” my son asked. “Do they have hot pink water snakes in Lake Michigan?”
“They don’t,” my husband said.
“They do!” I said. “And I just saw one!” I went on to argue the snake must have been poisonous due his exotic color.
Finally, the ferry arrived. I approached the boat’s first mate — a young man in a “Grateful Dead” T-shirt — in hopes he would verify what I’d seen.
“Do you have pink water snakes in Lake Michigan?” I asked him.
“None that I’ve heard of,” he said.
He yelled up to the boat captain, a crusty, big guy in a ball cap: “Hey, have you ever seen a pink snake on the lake?”
This question intrigued the captain. He climbed off the boat and approached me with a question.
“What exactly did this snake look like?” he asked.
“It looked a lot like the water snakes in Illinois,” I replied. “Except those are boring brown and this one was hot pink.”
When I looked the captain in the eye to accentuate my point, he shook his head and busted out laughing.
“You know the lenses of your sunglasses are pink?” he asked.
Pink? Well, come to think of it, yeah, they were.
On our drive to the ferry, I accidentally sat on my big black sunglasses. So I purchased a new pair for $4 when we stopped to get gas. The pink-lens ones were the only sunglasses that looked good on me. Plus they made the world look pretty — and who doesn’t like that?
My husband and son joined in when they heard the ferry captain laughing. Before long, I was laughing too.
“Everyone should see the world through rose-colored glasses like hers,” the big man said.
Two months later, I still enjoy sharing this story. No doubt, the captain does too.
