The next
day I met up with
some friends, Sean and Gerry, in the
The weather turned hot so we
concentrated near water, looking around bridges and wading out among the
cypress knees to see what we could find. At one stop we counted about a dozen
yellow-bellied turtles and a couple of alligators, and atop a tangle of
branches we spotted a Brown Water Snake basking in the shade. We then sloshed
out into a swampy area and came across a picture-perfect log, beautifully
weathered with smooth, split wood and graceful hollows. We were commenting on
how ideal it would be if you were going to design an aquatic display, and how
by all rights there should be a snake basking on it, at which point Sean
yells, “Snake!” and we watch a juvenile Brown Water Snake slither and dive
away! Keeping up his streak, a few minutes later Sean spots the rusty bands
of a very colorful juvenile Moccasin that retreats for cover into the hollow
of cypress stump. As evening approached we were met by Gerry and a friend of
Sean’s, so being four people and two cars, we decided to split up to cover
twice the ground. We agreed to meet every hour for show and tell. Gerry and I did ok the first hour, chasing
a small gator off the road and finding a young Moccasin, a Rough Green Snake,
a distressingly injured Eastern Box Turtle, and a couple of Pygmy Rattlesnakes,
one of which was typically colored and the other apparently
hypo-anerythristic (whitish dorsal stripe where normally reddish, pale gray
background color, no reddish markings visible anywhere).
Sean and his friend had also found a couple of Pygmies and a DOR Moccasin, as well as a cute
little Glossy Crayfish Snake. Then he says,
“Oh, yeah, we found something else” and with a sly little grin he pulls out
this heavy, gorgeous female Corn Snake.
OK, so now Gerry and I are feeling like, “Just wait till next
hour” and off we go. We meet up again around We cruised one more round, but once
again Sean must have had the home field advantage. Gerry and I find one DOR
scarlet snake, but Sean, of course, finds three AOR!
On the way out of ANF we came across two more DOR Corns and one DOR Scarlet. Altogether for the day we collectively found 12 species of snakes and 32 individuals (25 alive, 7 DOR). We then headed back to Sean’s to look at three Scarlet King Snakes he found or rescued on snake calls the previous week.
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