Changing how people view and treat snakes
Is it her simple body plan? Her poker face? Or perhaps a vast mythology of her malevolence and supernatural abilities? Humans have a tough time describing what snakes do, let alone understanding why they do it. Proud skeptics that they are, scientists long doubted that snakes are capable of complex behavior. Reports of pitviper aggregations, …
When we encountered this Rock Rattlesnake a few weeks ago, we were aiming for a unique shot, but ended up with something completely unexpected and difficult to explain.
In August, 2018, we were blessed by one of the most exciting and interesting wildlife observations in recent memory -– and it happened right outside our door! We did our best to film and photo document what we saw, and we are excited to bring the saga back to life in this series of posts. …
A Tale of Two Trash Snakes Part 6 Read: A Tale of Two Trash Snakes Part 5 After a late night of surveilling wild snakes, I get outside mid-morning on the off-chance I can find one of our subjects sunning in the damp vegetation. With all the difficulty we’ve had in keeping up with them …
A Tale of Two Trash Snakes Part 5 Read: A Tale of Two Trash Snakes Part 4 What would a downpour do to Carol’s scent trail? It’s already been a couple of days since she passed over the ground here – did Daryl miss his chance at love, at least for now? The ground is …
A Tale of Two Trash Snakes Part 4 Read: A Tale of Two Trash Snakes Part 3 The day Carol showed up, we checked under the truck bed liner to find Daryl still coiled in a hunting posture under its downhill edge. “There are two lepidus in the yard…” we would say to one another …
A Tale of Two Trash Snakes Part 3 Read: A Tale of Two Trash Snakes Part 2 The day Carol revealed herself to us, consuming a whiptail on our doorstep, she ended up on the far side of the garage, under an old metal sheet. As night fell, I cast a dim light under her …
A Tale of Two Trash Snakes Part 2 Read: A Tale of Two Trash Snakes Part 1 The bike ride was hard, and now I was hungry. I set up the solar oven outside our front entrance to preheat, and flopped onto the couch. Not 10 minutes had gone by when I returned outside with …
A Tale of Two Trash Snakes Part 1 Well into our second summer, we didn’t have much hope left that we’d moved to serpent’s paradise. We had traded the city for the Gila National Forest with high hopes of snakes on our doorstep, but with each passing, snakeless day, we questioned whether our forested, northern …
This year we were blessed by one of the most exciting and interesting wildlife observations in recent memory -– and it happened right outside our door! We did our best to film and photo document what we saw, and we are excited to bring the saga back to life in a series of upcoming posts. …