Another great day herping!

I took a stroll around a lake today and saw buches of turtles. I checked out an area nearby that is supposed to be home to some Canebrake Rattlers. Didn't see any of those, but did run into a very ornery Northern Black Racer that actually rushed at me, climbed my field stick, struck my camera, and bit me 3 times. Later this evening, I went to a friend's house and on the spur of the moment we decided to hit a trash heap. I didn't have my camera, but I did bring a few finds home and took some shots at my house. I've already let the little snakes go. I'm going to keep the King for awhile.

All in all, today's haul:

2 Northern Black Racers
2 Eastern King Snakes
1 Worm Snake
1 Northern Ringneck Snake

(Our secret trash heap is so productive that we caught 1 Racer, 2 Kings, the Worm and the Ringneck all in under 15 minutes. The only reason we left was that it was getting dark and the ticks were out in force.)

More.................

And some more..............

And the last of them............

That's actually a Southern Ringneck Snake. We have both kinds here and I ought to look them up in my book because I can never remember which is which.

The Southern Ringneck is friggin' adorable!

wow, those are fantastic finds and pictures. That racer looks soooo friendly! haha

Fantastic, thanks for sharing

Wow, what a great day!! I'd sure like to find an Eastern King.

NAnci

I found the King in that picture and a very large Black Racer under the same piece of tin. They were about 2 feet apart. We found the other King under another piece of ten less than ten feet away. The second King was smaller than the one in my picutre.

I'm going to keep the King in the picture for at least awhile. When my buddy picked her up, she bit him. He handed her to me and she was a doll-baby - still is. She is the most docile King I've ever handled - much more so than my other pet King. I'm keeping her is a large sterlite at the moment, with aspen and a water dish. I'm going to try and feed her in a few minutes. I treated her for mites last night (didn't see any), and treated her for some scale rot this morning. It was rather damp under the tin where I found her and she got a few patches on her belly that look a little rough and wrinkly. A little bacitracin and some dry substrate should take care of that.

I'll post some more pics of ther later.

She's eating. I'm feeding her in her sterlite so as not to stress her, but I served up a small adult F/T mouse on a paper plate and she's eating it. Tail's going down as I write this.

Sorry for the crappy photos, but I didn't want to stress her during her first meal.

that's terrific!