Just back from enjoying the forest and the waterfalls in the Pond Mountain section of the Cherokee NF in the wake of another Hurricane that wasn't. Very little non-human wildlife observed; the mice in the shelters were even absent or inactive!

One bit of fun that I only learned of from the corpses. An experienced hiker for this overnited alone at Moreland shelter, built a fire, sat on a log with a crack in it for a while, woke up in the morning and was having coffee when he realized that his log had two young copperheads hiding in the crack!

He dispatched them swiftly and left the headless bodies in front of the shelter as a warning to other shelter visitors. Moral: look before you sit.