UNION COUNTY, Illinois — Around to vehicles as their bi-annual migration peaks.

Forest officials say thousands of snakes, as well as other reptiles and amphibians, use the road inside the Shawnee National Forest to travel back and forth between their feeding grounds in the nearby LaRue Swamp and their hibernation area in the surrounding bluffs. To protect the animals as they migrate, the 2.7-mile stretch of LaRue Road is now closed yearly from Sept. 1 to Oct. 30 and March 15 to May 15.

“The No. 1 snake you’re going to see here is going to be the Northern Cottonmouth,” U.S. Forest Service Wildlife Biologist Mark Vukovich previously said. “The other two venomous snakes are the Copperhead and the Timber Rattlesnake. You have a good chance of seeing those.”

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