5-07-08

Austin and I made a quick stop to a spot we check a couple times a year. It has paid off with quite a few milk snakes over the last few years. It was a bit depressing to see the spot this time. Someone had been there, as was easy to tell from the rocks that had been displaced. It was strange, as rocks were not only flipped and not returned, but some had been moved a couple of feet from their original locations! It was pretty strange. I didn't seem like the work of a over-zealous herper, but it didn't seem like something that could have been done by accident either. Oh well, hopefully it's a one time thing. We put the rocks back as best we could.

We did manage to find a Milk Snake (Lampropeltis triangulum) under one of the rocks we turned. It was about eighteen inches long, and had the typical dark coloration of the adult milks from the area. It had a large gash on it's side, and the wound looked fairly recent. The cut started to open up when we handled the snake, so we let it go back into the rockpile without trying to get it to sit for pictures.

A few rocks later we turned up a juvenile Fox Snake (Elaphe vulpina). It was probably a two year old snake. It was about sixteen inches long. It was our first fox snake of the year so I took some pictures even though it was going into shed.

That was it for our trip. Hope people leave this spot alone!