Local realtor Christina Verrette recently found herself looking for a fun summer community activity in Luling for her three children to get involved in, and came across someone in another community who started a rock snake project.
“I happened to see an idea for it on Facebook and I thought, ‘oh, that’s the cutest thing,’” Verrette said. “My kids are home with me during the summer, and I thought it would be something super cute to do.”
Verrette’s rock snake is an outdoor craft project using mostly smooth pebble type rocks to create a ‘snake’ by adding individual rocks to the end of the snake, one rock at a time. Each contributor that adds their own rock to the end of the snake can paint, draw, color or design their rock however they like, making each piece of the snake unique. The project is designed to get community involvement, with locals invited to add to the snake by adding their own rocks at the end of the snake to help it ‘grow.’
Verrette says she was initially attracted to this type of craft project because it was an outdoor type of summer endeavor designed for kids that – most importantly -did not require electronic devices to participate.
“I’m still raising kids, and I’m always looking for them to have something to do, especially in this day and age where electronics and social media are so prevalent,” Verrette said. “I want them to still have a lot of the same values that I grew up on – like going outside, playing in the dirt, riding your bike, looking around for your friends.”
To kick off her rock snake project, Verrette and her three children created and painted the front portion of the snake and the first few rock pieces of its body and laid it out linearly in her front yard in the 200 block of Beaupre Drive in Luling with a small sign. They named their snake “Rocky the Rock Snake” and then invited the community to contribute to it via social media.
“I just snapped a few photos and put it in some of our local Facebook groups and it kind of took off,” Verrette said. “It was kind of surprising to me, it was just some little activity that I did with my kids and thought maybe some kids in the neighborhood would enjoy, but it’s garnered a lot more attention than I expected.”
Within just 48 hours, her initial post gathered lots of local interest, racking up a few hundred Facebook likes and dozens of positive online comments with promises to participate.
“I looked this morning and we actually had someone bring a few additional rocks, but it looked like they had painted either oyster or seashells instead of rocks and had dropped them off, which I thought was really cool,” Verrette said. “It was a different texture, a different shape, a different variant. I’m kind of excited just to see how it grows and all the different things people paint and drop off.”
With her rock snake project now underway, Verrette says she and her three children don’t have a specific length goal for ‘Rocky the Rock Snake’ but hope to grow it as long as they can with the community’s help.
“I would love for it to take up the entire length of my property, as long as it doesn’t upset my neighbors,” Verrette chuckled. “I’d like to see it go past our two houses…my yard guy may not be real happy with me, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
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