Yes and Yes ! Yes, there are the types of trees that drop leaves, and the leaves do build up and then either burn from fires or turn brown from flood waters. Yes, it can get deep with a mixture of leaves, vines, palm fronds, brush/ tall grass and sandy dirt.
Yes on the creepy crawlers being dislocated, but it happens both during and after brushfires and hurricanes. In 2004 when we had hurricanes Francis and Gene, I found a 6 ft. cotton mouth wrapped around the palm tree in my screened in pool area. By the time I found it, she had already had babies and they were in my pool skimmer. DH was in the Middle East at the time, so I was on my own to get them out !!
Then the weekend of Mothers Day in 2008, we had a 70 acre brush fire in the preserve around my neighborhood. I'm in a cul-de-sac which backs up to the preserve. During and right after the fires, we had snakes, wild boar, bobcats, deer, armadillos, rabbits, crawfish, regular fish, turtles, otters and a few other crawlers coming out through our yards. On a regular day when we have no fires or hurricanes, I still find snakes, rabbits, squirrels, armadillos, bobcats and an occasional deer walking or slithering through my yard.
