"It's not a swamp," he points out mercilessly. "It takes a LOT of water to house a zolom. We'll be fine."

Surely. Surely NOTHING AT ALL can go wrong. "We just need to make sure we don't step on anything that bites, so don't be afraid to make some noise. Though I've heard serpents are deaf, they can pick up on the vibrations of something moving. They don't want to get squashed any more than we want to be bitten."

Reasonable advice! It might even work! There's snakes everywhere, they're just hard to spot because they are hiding like sensible ambush predators. Some lie in comfortable green coils in trees. Others are pretending to be tumbles of rocks. One monstrosity as thick as a log floats serenely in some nearby water trying to pretend to be a branch. It's not working.

But nothing exceedingly large or aggressive! Yet!