When
my brother Ron and I visited Before heading to the study site we spent
our first day in the field with Rich and Kerby, a couple of good guys I knew
from an on-line herping forum. We met in person the night before at a BBQ
graciously hosted by Jerry, another forum regular. The two buddies were searching for Speckled
Rattlesnakes and invited Ron and I to come along, so we met up on a cool,
windy morning and descended into a large boulder field at the base of some
rocky hills.
We hadn’t been there but 15 minutes or so
when Kerby calls out, “Gila!” I turn
around, and there basking on a rock, right out in the open, is the very
lizard we’d flown a thousand miles to see . . . and we weren’t even
cheating! I knew we’d see one at the
study site, but this unexpected find was the real thrill we were seeking; we
could have ended the trip right then and gone home happy.
With its sharply contrasting orange and
black aposematic (warning) colors you might think this lizard would really
stand out. Indeed, fully exposed on
the naked rock the Gila was hard to miss, however, the effectiveness of its
camouflage became apparent as soon as it crawled down to take refuge in
low-lying vegetation. Its beaded texture and broken pattern blended perfectly
with the fragments of light and shadow at the base of a nearby cactus.
We proceeded to wander among the boulders,
looking at cactus blooming between the cracks and seeing the occasional
lizard darting or basking on the rocks.
In a clearing Rich spots a rounded form looking just like the gray
granite, except this one had legs and a head that was quietly grazing on the
green grass.
After a few hours of searching we began to
make our way back, pausing to look for snakes at the base of rocks sheltered from
the wind but still exposed to the sun.
Nothing, nothing, nothing . . . then suddenly, it was there. Often times snakes
are so well camouflaged that you can be staring right at one and never notice
it, the cryptic pattern and coloration blending in perfectly with their
surroundings. If you do spot it, then
the image takes shape gradually, slowly resolving into something recognizable
as “snake”, the lines emerging from the background as something slightly
different. Not in this case. I turned a corner, looked around a rock,
and the figure just popped right out ¾ perfectly still, circular, and screaming
orange against the grey and green background.
It was stunningly beautiful, all terra cotta and textured with subtle
shading and a silent stare.
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