5-04-08

Trip Details

Location: Central Missouri

Conditions: Sunny, highs in the middle 60's

Time: 10:30 am for the first stop, evening for the second

Herpers: Mike Pingleton, Wayne Brekhus, Jim Scharosch

Photos and account by Jim Scharosch

Mike rolled in last night and we sat around the campfire and drank a couple of beers. It was nice catching up with him. I whipped up camp breakfast the next morning of eggs and burnt sausage and we packed up and headed out to meet up with Wayne.

We arrived at the spot late, but Wayne was late too so it all worked out. After introductions, we walked a trail, then up a hillside to a nice hilltop glade.

It wasn't long before our first snake of the day was found, a Flat-headed Snake (Tantilla gracilus).

It was nice to see this snake, as I had found them before in Kansas, but had never gotten any pictures of them. They are usually difficult to photograph, but this one posed nicely. Mike has this exact same picture, since the snake posed so long we were both able to shoot it. We saw more flat-headed snakes, and a few other small critters, but no big game snakes on this glade, or the next few that we stopped at. The weather was really nice, but we just weren't finding stuff. Mike mentioned his theory that the second nice day after a cold day is usually better, and we hoped that would hold true.

We did stop off at another location, and found a Copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix) under an old metal silo door.

Later I saw this Fence Lizard (Sceloporus undulatus) posing on a stump.

We went back to Waynes in the afternoon and his wife Rachel made us some really good tofu lasanga. We headed back out that evening to one of Wayne's nearby spots. We worked the area for a couple hours and only saw a racer, that we didn't manage to get a hand on. We road cruised for a while, and had an entertaining conversation regarding what it would be like if someone were really into rabbits like we are into snakes. We cracked on what it would be like to road-cruise bunnies. It was a lot of fun.

We headed back to Waynes and sat around and drank a few beers.