Our meter readers each read literally hundreds and hundreds of meters daily. Water, Electric & Gas – these folks move quickly from one site to another. With water meters, they pull the top of the meter box off and reach down to flip the small protective cover off the glass covered meter itself to read and record the current usage. The flip the cover back over and replace the lid. Typically for a single residence, they will take about 30 seconds to read all three meters and they’re off to the next. We have some meters that are ‘remote’. The meter readers always take that additional ‘second or two’ to look in the box before reaching in. Today we had an ‘issue’ with 5 fully grown cottonmouth snakes in a remote water meter well. Our reader popped the lid and looked inside before reaching in with his bare hand. Needless to say, he backed up quickly and called our contracted ‘critter’ assistants. Here are 3 of the 5 that we pulled from the meter well. Remote site, extremely poisonous snakes – it could have been bad for the meter reader if he hadn’t done what he was trained to do – “Look first”.
