The snake-wrangling 84-year-old who lives on a remote barrier island ^14.2%

BBC Travel - By Alexandra Marvar - 6/13/2026, 1:13 PM

Negativity Bias 20.7% - Appeal to Emotion 12.8% - Halo Effect 12.1%

Every week, 84-year-old Carol Ruckdeschel walks the wind-whipped beach on Cumberland Island, Georgia. Wearing white rubber boots, and with her dark hair in pigtail braids, she jots down everything she finds in a field journal: spoonbills, sandwich terns, shearwaters, sea oats, moon snails, micromolluscs, whelks, calico crabs. This... more