A few days ago, my son was doing his math with me at the kitchen island. The weather was very nice, and he was just about done with a difficult lesson, and he asked if we could take a break to look for a few snakes. I said sure and we headed out with our mud boots and snake hooks, to a spot where we have seen a good number of hognose.
We were just headed out of the wooded area, back to the house, because the mosquitos were getting nasty. My son looked down and said, "Mom! Tiny snake!" and it was a little, 5 inch red-bellied snake. So cute and tiny!
We brought it back to the house and put it in a container so I could take pictures later. We headed back out to look and he was shouting "SNAKE" again! I went to the field and saw what he was after. It was not a snake but a northern prairie skink! With the assistance of his 2 sisters, he was able to pin it down and grab it, and thankfully it kept its tail.
After we brought that back for pictures, we walked around the house because our dog Rylee was acting funny by the corner of the house. Then we saw why ... TWO ADULT FOXSNAKES! I have never seen a foxsnake in the wild, and here are TWO BIG ONES sunning themselves next to my basement window. I snapped a few pictures between hyperventilating, and then realized they were mating! I shooed the dog and kids out of the area and walked far away, but they separated by that point so we decided to catch them. I am thankful for my snake hook, because the female was quite upset about being disturbed. She was rattling, posing, and sometimes lunging and striking. I used the hook to put her in a container, and we went back for the male, who had wedged himself in a crack. We waited him out and caught him when he emerged, and he was more docile.
After we captured them, we were just in awe. We found three new species on our property in about 30 minutes. All during a break from school! It is times like these that I love that we homeschool, because I would not have had that moment with them had they been in public school. My son kept hugging me, saying he was going to burst because he was so happy. He's 12-1/2 years old.
Here are a few pictures.
The first 5 are of the foxsnakes. The first is how we found them. The closeups are of the female before capture, and the last is my 2nd and 4th child holding them because we brought them to soccer practice/pictures. The coach wanted to see our finds (he is a reptile-enjoying guy), and we had a BLAST showing them off and educating people about them. Some were fearful but came around to even want to touch them, which was cool.
BOUT' CORNS !!
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