OK, I think I may have just helped perform the strangest possible task for the week.
Nope, I’m SURE of it.
Doc was having problems with one of the wells at the farm, and I went out to help. Â Pulled the old well pump out, pressure tank, and the piping down the well. Â The well is a hand dug well – you can see the brick lining on the inside. Â The cap is a solid piece of limestone with a hole about four foot across chisled directly into it (rather impressive really)
So we pull it all out, and the old lid over the hole is rotting. Â Doc had mentioned before he didn’t feel the water from that particular well was fit for human consumption anymore – it’s ok for agricultural use, but anything else is out of the question.
Doc thought the well only had a few feet of water in it, and was at most 50 foot deep. Â Um… no. Â We dropped a fabric tape in there with a weight on the end. Â It’s 36 feet to the top of the water. Â And 65 feet to the bottom of the water. Â It’s a hell of a lot deeper than expected for a hand dug well.
We get the lid off, and Doc is peering down in there, and mentions there’s stuff floating around in there. Â He keeps looking… “Davis, I think there’s some snakes in there.”
Uh, what? Â WTF would snakes be doing in a well?
So we lower a light down in there, and sure as shit, there’s stuff floating around in there, along with snakes. Â Probably 4 or 5 live ones, and a few dead ones. Â We end up setting up a bucket with holes in it on a rope, and I spent probably two hours fishing out dead frogs and one dead snake.
Doc took his turn, and managed to get more dead frogs, 1/2 a dead snake (eewww), and one live snake.
Snakes in a well. Â FISHING for snakes in a well. Â No matter what I do next week, it couldn’t get stranger than that.