Today I met a very lovely friend at the Cosumnes River Preserve!

They were very patient and didn't mind at all as a dozen ecology students got up in their face with cameras, ooh-ing and aah-ing.

Garter snake alert!! I love these little guys. I was at work and didnt want him to musk on me so i threw on some gloves, but overall this little guy was extremely polite about being removed from the shop tractor. Makes me think about how badly ive always wanted a colubrid but that won't happen for a long time x)

ALERT: LITTLE GUY SIGHTED!!!

I saw a baby garter snake while walking around campus today!!! I’m so happy that it’s finally getting warm enough for the snakes to come back out where I live! This was my first snake of the season and he was so photogenic. For a while I was scared I’d have to move him because he was near a place that gets a lot of foot traffic and I didn’t want him getting stepped on, but luckily he went into a nearby thicket and was safe. I love handling snakes but I didn’t really want to get musked on and smell like poop for the rest of the day.

Here’s the photo without any edits btw

A wild snake appears! 😲 looking at the video and comparing to what is local to us, I think Dan was right and this is a Coast Gartersnake - Thamnophis elegans terrestris. This is only the second time I have encountered a wild snake around our home! So cool!!

Was checking out the blooms on a #toyon when I came face to face with this red racer.

He was a good 6 feet, wrapped all through the toyon as he looked for birds and nests. Red racers are the fastest snakes in the desert, and primarily feed on lizards, smaller snakes, mice, rats and birds.

They’re non-venomous, but are considered mean-tempered and can bite. This one was probably far more worried about me than I was about him.

Oh, and I made a friend

Bull Snake

Rattlesnake On Trail Near Sweetwater River by Arlene Schag Via Flickr: Almost stepped on the rattlesnake as it caught some of the late afternoon sunlight on the trails near Sweetwater River. Riparian / Chaparral habitat

Garter Snake

This one briefly took up residence in our backyard. I was happy about it. I happen to like snakes. Won't keep then as pets, but I still enjoy them.

A tiny midland water snake. Love these lil guys 💕

HERES THE DEAL

Lucy gray’s fate is meant to be a mystery

Like Highbottom said… mystery’s drive people crazy like that’s THE WHOLE DEAL. She haunts Snow because he doesn’t know WHAT happened exactly

Sitting there and telling people they’re stupid for believing either she’s alive or dead ??? Wack move. It’s literally not confirmed for either and I really doubt it ever will be as its supposed to haunt us as well.

TRIGGER WARNING: DECEASED ANIMAL

So this is a little sad, on my way home from work (I work as a sustainability educator at my university’s Environmental Education Center) I found a dead DeKay’s Brown Snake (Storeria dekayi). I don’t know how it passed away but this made me really sad since this species is on my list of animals that I wanted to see in the wild and the first specimen I found was dead. I don’t know how it passed but it did have a wound on its body so maybe a predatory bird killed it and then accidentally dropped it. While unfortunate, this is a part of life so I just moved it slightly off the path so that whatever wants to can eat it without getting stepped on (and so that no one accidentally would step on a dead snake)

DeKay’s Brown Snakes are cool because they are a super tiny species with adults only growing around 10 inches in length. They are members of the Colubrid family (the same family as Garter Snakes and Hognoses), however, unlike their rodent and amphibian eating relatives the DeKay’s Brown Snake is so small that they only prey on invertebrates like slugs, snails, and worms. Occasionally, they have been reported also eating isopods and millipedes but it is thought that this is most likely a case of accidental ingestion as they prefer to prey on soft-bodied invertebrates. The species was named after American zoologist James Ellsworth De Kay, who discovered the species, but their genus name of Storeria is in honor of zoologist David Humphreys Storer.

all yours

hands of a child / gentle and wild

Festus Creed and Sejanus Plinth Sassing Each Other at the 10th Annual Reaping Ceremony

—The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023)