Things with Wings

First of all, I've been wanting to mention that the Sandhill Cranes are finally on the refuge. I've seen them flying and I've heard their distinct call, but I haven't gotten close enough to them to take any pictures.

In spite of myself, I'm having a pretty good week. The days are just gorgeous so it's a pleasure to be doing outside work. Yesterday I took a walk on the nature trail because I needed one last Southern Catalpa picture for the plant book. While I was there, I decided I would stop at everyone's favorite look-out point for Sand Creek Bay.

And I saw lots of American Avocets. I had my hiking boots on and the refuge's high powered digital camera. So I decided I'd just hop down into the muck and see what kind of pictures I could get. And here's what I got:





I'd like to caption this one: "Oh no! I lost my contact!"

And this one: "Hey, let me help you look for your contact."

So then this one, of course, would be: "Hey! I found your contact - It's right here!"

They are fun birds to watch - even when they're just looking for food (or lost contacts).

So then I meandered back to my truck outside the nature trail, taking in the beautiful warm afternoon sunshine. I get back to my truck, and a monarch butterfly sweeps up right in front me, gets eye level with me for a second or two, and flitters off again - before I could get my camera on and focused on her. She - because only a "she" could be this coy - came back to tease and flirt with me and my camera. Then she landed on the white background of my truck and gave me a perfect background. Of course, she only stayed there for 10 seconds. Maybe all butterflies are flirts.


Here's hoping she makes it to Mexico!

Hairy, ugly, brown spiders with webs that seemingly defy physics.

I am speaking, of course, of a spider species belonging to the orb weaver group. This group has over 2800 species and over 160 genera. In this group, we have such spiders as the garden spider, which is very colorful and whose web has a zig-zag running through the middle. Here:

But we're not gonna talk about those today. We're going to talk about the much less cool species of orb-weaver. The ugly, brown, and hairy one whose webs can span entire roads.

I got email today asking for information on the webs that are everywhere right now. It seemed relevant enough to give everyone information on it. So get ready to be informed, you lucky readers. :)

They live most commonly in fields, forests, and gardens. Definitely not an inside spider. If you see one inside, it's lost, and therefore has flawed instincts. Thus you will be doing the species a favor by killing it and thus weeding its inferior genes out of the population. You'll be helping evolution along - Darwin will love you. ;)

What these beasties do is let out a strand of very strong silk, and they let it fly until it lands somewhere. Normally somewhere on the ground or (if the wind is strong) on a nearby branch/tree/car hood. This is called their "anchor strand". They build their web around that anchor strand. And they make them big without any thought to the larger animals that might walk through them.

If their web becomes severely damaged during the night, the spider will eat its web in the morning and remake it during the evening. I've yet to see this, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen (after all, I don't spend much of my time studying them).

As far as I know, the spider's bite won't cause much damage to humans - aside from maybe a welt/swelling you would expect from any non-venomous-to-humans spider bite. Whenever I've run into one, or even come close to running into one, the spider - which hangs out in the middle - will creepily run for cover.

They webs are just annoying! The spiders seem to be running amok this year (or spinning amok, rather), and I can only assume that's because of the wet summer we Oklahomans have had.

It most likely goes something like this:

Wet summer + more standing water = More insect food & more insect habitat = more bug sex = more bug babies (this is esp. true for mosquitoes/dragon flies/damsal flies/some flies (bugs that hang out around water)).

Wet summer = more food & habitat for insect spawn = higher numbers of successful, surviving insects

More bug sex + more surviving bug spawn = more spider food = more spider sex (Since they don't have to work so hard for food, they can concentrate on the procreation side of things. The other explanation is that more spiders are surviving long enough to have sex - no starvation here.)

(interesting side note here - there are some spider species - like the Black Widow - where the female will kill/eat the male after mating with him. Students have asked me why and I tell them that the male has served his purpose, and is encroaching on the female's territory - so she simply gets rid of him. You see, in some species (in general, not just spiders) the male will harass and cling to the female after mating with her to ensure she doesn't replace his sperm with some other male's (he wants his genes to be spread, not some other guy's). There are many ways males can get this "sperm insurance" - plugs, scrub brush penis, and the ever popular never-leaving-the-female-alone. Very annoying and often harmful to the female.)

more spider sex + higher insect (spider food) numbers = higher numbers of surviving, successful spider spawn = TOO MANY DAMN SPIDERS

Here's a picture of one of those ugly, brown, hairy things. This shows the underside:

Enjoy because this is most likely the only time I will post pictures of spiders. *Shudder*

Fun with the news

Fun indeed.

So far I have done two interviews with newspapers on behalf of Salt Plains NWR. I am quickly learning that either 1) I am not very articulate or 2) the two reporters that I have spoken with really don't care about quoting me correctly.

The first newspaper was the Lawton Constitution, over the annual Pelican Celebration. That was a pretty good little article. I was misquoted several times (several? I mean everytime he quoted me he was wrong), but that's not a big deal.

This time, however, the reporter got lots of facts wrong. Here's the article: http://www.ocolly.com/2007/10/03/a-new-type-of-bird-migrates-to-oklahoma/

I assumed when we were talking on the phone that she didn't really know much about biology. (Go ahead and assume I'm understating). She asked such questions as "How are the pelicans adjusting to the water?" (To which there was a bemused silence on my end of the phone line - Sounding something like this: "????")

She also asked me to inform her about the refuge. What a wide open question that was! So I told her we have roughly 30,000 acres. 10,000 approximately for the salt flats, 10,000 for the reservoir, and 10,000 for the wooded/pasture/prairie areas.

What did she get from that? Here: "The refuge contains 10 acres on the salt flat plains and an additional 10,000 acres for reservoirS."

Haha. The other serious flaw is when she asked me what we had on the refuge - some of the other birds - and while listing off some, I said "Night herons"

Her translation - "Night hens".

You can't make this stuff up. I printed off the article and showed it to the refuge manager - asking him if he could pick out the mistakes and misquotes. He told me you just have to get used to it - and then went on to say he very rarely reads the articles he was interviewed for, because they're just going to mess it up. On that same note, he also said that it did absolutely no good to get mad, because they very rarely print corrections either. (He then went on to say he's never seen anything that bad before)

And I'm not mad. I really do think it's amusing. What's even more amusing is she is an OSU student. Now I have something in my arsenal for whenever the cowboy alums who work here start razzing me about OU.

Speaking of OU - was that a good game, or was that a good game??

Don't blame me if this works - Take II

And Curtis will not be blamed because it does not work.

Last Thursday along about lunch time, as previously mentioned, I was in Cherokee because I was giving Education programs to some of the elementary classes. The refuge workers came to Cherokee to give me (and Curtis) a send-off with a lunch at Pizza Hut.

Thursday morning before I even left for Cherokee, Curtis and I were back out wandering through the wilderness, putting the finishing touches on the camera system. That means we hooked up the batteries to the system (thus giving it two power sources - solar and battery). I was very excited about seeing it work, but I had to get to Cherokee. Curtis promised to fill me in later.

Back at Pizza Hut, most of the refuge workers are grumbling about what a funky bad day most of them had had up to that point. Nothing too terrible - just frustrating. There was a break in conversation. I looked at Curtis. "So......? Did the cameras work?"

I received a very dark look in response. "Don't ask," said one of the maintenance guys, "We told you it was a bad day."

And now he's gone and won't be back until the first week in November (I think). Hopefully that will give him enough time to regain some enthusiasm and/or ideas on where to go from here. I can't help thinking that if I land the ORP job, this project is going to fall on my desk because I've had the most recent work with it - aside from Curtis himself, who is leaving us all behind.

And if it does, I will get the distinct pleasure of shimmying up this tower to mess with the microwave antenna (notice that you cannot actually see the microwave antenna - aside from a blurry form or two near the top):

Can't get a feel for how tall that really is? Try this picture (and please note that I cannot even get the whole thing in my shot. Also - See the antennas? Again - blurry forms):

That's the boss's Tahoe that you see off to the side. The same Tahoe that got me stuck with some fellow Pelican enthusiasts a week or so ago.

But back to the sheer height of that tower that I am sure waves in the wind. I'm not afraid of heights. It's plummeting to my death that I don't like. I'm told that if it comes to climbing that, I will be wearing a harness. Of course, I have to make it up to the top before I clip myself in. So that makes the climb up there a bit exciting, no?

You see, that's the tower that faces the other antennas across Sand Creek Bay. It goes from the camera to the microwave antenna at the bay to the antenna on this tower to a computer here (I think - still not sure on that last part). From there, the computer is somehow hooked up to the tv in the visitor's center to provide a 'direct' (not exactly a word I would use for this setup...) feed of the action on the bay.

We'll see what happens from here. A previous employer once told me he thought I was bad luck, because as soon as I'd start helping him on his project, many, many things would start going wrong. I have my own theories on that, but the important thing to note here is, even though Curtis is not to be blamed, neither is his helper. I know I'm not the Murphy's law of biology.

Just because I've only caught 5 Kangaroo rats in over 2 months, and just because the newly fixed and returned camera equipment still doesn't work does not mean that everything I touch breaks or becomes tainted.

But speaking of - I've picked that cold back up. I can't breathe at all, and no drugs will touch the congestion in my nose. Sleeping has become a problem. Oh, and in the past week, I've sliced open several fingertips with my razor (3 to be exact) and cut the palm of my hand while breaking the coffee pot at the bunkhouse. Oh, and this weekend, I broke one of my friend's parents' drinking glasses.

Sigh - I suppose I'll go pick up the traps from my somewhat failed research experiment.

One week left?!

Today was another fun day - but very tiring.

But before we get to that, I want to talk about something I forgot to mention yesterday.

On Tuesday afternoon I went ahead and set up about half of my live traps. It is now getting a bit late in the year for the drift fences, so those funnel traps and pit-fall traps are closed down, and next week I'll be picking those up and putting them away until next summer. But, the mammals should be scurrying about busily looking for food to fatten themselves up for the upcoming winter. Prime time to catch K. rats, right? So I went and set some up. Of course, considering the blatant disregard the rats hold for my research goals, I wasn't very optimistic about my turnout.

So non-optimistic was I that I did not check them first thing yesterday morning. First thing yesterday morning, I went to Cherokee for the education programs. Next thing was lunch. The thing after that was messing with the fragile camera systems with Curtis. So, it was at approximately 3 o'clock in the afternoon that I went to check my mammal traps.

This wasn't a good thing. These metal mammal traps become extremely hot inside once the sun hits them. I thought everything would be alright because 1) I didn't think anything would make it into the traps and 2) It's not nearly as hot these days as it has been.

So I go to check my traps. And what should I find but 2 traps closed, with Kangaroo rats inside. Of course! The day I'm not on the ball about checking my traps is the most successful day I've had to date. Luckily for my conscience (and even more luckily for the rats) everybody was fine. Because I had been pessimistic, I didn't carry my equipment with me (rulers, bags, nail polish, weight measurer) so they got to go to the air conditioned lab while I took their measurements. I had a little boy and a little girl. The little boy was about 9.5 inches long with a 6 in. tail. He weighed around 82 grams. The little girl was 9 in. long, with a 5.5 in. tail and weighed 67 grams.

Up to this point, the kangaroo rats I have captured have tried to get away, but none of them have tried to bite me. They squirm, they squeak, but they don't bite. I still wear my gloves, and it's a good thing I did. I was painting the boy's toe nails when I noticed that the little guy is gnawing on my index finger. I barely felt a thing - it was almost kinda cute. "Aw...he's trying to fight back."

I can only assume that sooner red isn't his color. Probably a cowboy fan.

With those two I now have a total of 5-6 captured Kangaroo rats total. I think I can publish in Nature with that kind of data!

Today I had the pre-K, 3rd, and 4th grade classes. First of all, 3rd and 4th are my absolute favorite classes to teach. For the most part, they are all very interested in learning about biology. They know enough to want to learn more, but they don't yet think they know it all. I had a sci-fi fan in my 4th grade class today. "Do you think that scientists are going to build a time machine and go back in time and stop the dinosaurs from going extinct again?" "Do you believe humans and animals are going to go away and all that will be left are plants?" "Do you think that we're gonna pollute so much that our air turns green and yellow and we have to go live on Mars?" Another girl said, and this is a direct quote, "One question that haunts me is that why does every museum always have one t-rex dinosaur?" (Lol!!)

But that particular Q&A session (aside from having to voice my beliefs on time travel) was very fun and informative. We talked about endangered species - why they become endangered, what we can do to help, etc. etc. We talked about DDT and lead shot and bald eagles. We talked about over-populations and what happens when a population exceeds the amount a resources it needs. They all seemed to understand everything - it was very fun.

One little girl asked me how I knew all this stuff. So that got us started on college. A boy asked me "Did you ever get bored in your classes?"

Lol. What to say to that? I couldn't exactly say "Well, no, because I always brought a newspaper with me and would do the crossword puzzle in class." So instead we talked about what my favorite classes were, and how I am able to remember all this stuff.

A girl came up to me after we had finished a "lap sit" game (where you stand in a circle and sit on the knees of the person behind you). She said that she was glad we weren't playing that game anymore. The boy who sat on her knees was "weird". I told her "All boys are weird. Remember that." She put her fist up in the air and said, "I will!" Haha.

The third grade class was also fun. Normally, during their insightful and clever remarks, I can keep a straight face and move on ("A mate is like having a boyfriend or girlfriend. EEEEWWW!!!!"). Today we played the predator/prey game, where most of the children are either skunks, armadillos, porcupines, possums, or turtles and maybe 3 of the other students are predators who tag their prey. The prey animals each have their own method of defense, but the goal is to find another of your species and get back to base without becoming food for the predator.

After one of these games, I had them group up so we could talk about what happened during the game and how that relates to the real lives of animals. One boy interrupted me and said, "I saw one of my relatives on the side of the road this morning..." as he was looking down at his noisemaker. His noisemaker was that of a skunk. I made the connection and couldn't contain myself - I just busted out laughing. What a clever kid!

The pre-K class was...interesting. I had not done a pre-k class before this morning, so I just went ahead and did the regular kindergarten program. The pre-k kids got it for the most part. But their attention spans were so short! We were talking about using our eyes to describe birds, and the game was to describe a bird on a card, and the students had to point out which bird they thought it was on a sheet given to them. It was fun and they were enjoying themselves, but I knew it was time to move on when they all, en masse, stood up and started jumping up and down. For no apparent reason whatsoever. It was the strangest thing. "Okay!" I said, "Let's move on to finding animals with our ears!" And then they all sat back down and paid attention. For approximately 5 minutes. The teacher said a couple of times when they were leaving that I did a wonderful job and that normally their attention spans are practically non-existent, so she knew I was keeping them interested.

Sure I did. But it wasn't easy!

Tomorrow is my last day at Cherokee - Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd. Here's hoping it's as fun a day tomorrow as it was today.

Today was also my going-away party. Because I was already in Cherokee, the refuge workers met me at the Pizza Hut there. It was actually rather symbolic, as I had not eaten pizza since I started my internship. It tasted amazing!

Actually it was both mine and Curtis's going-away party. Curtis is leaving us as well - he's going to a national wildlife refuge in Texas called San Bernard's. Hopefully I'll be able to make it down there one day to volunteer. It was fun working with him - even though he is an Aggie.

He'll actually be here until November, but he's not gonna be here next week and then the 3 weeks after that he's going to be in training. Hence why his going-away party was paired with mine. Next week will be my last week as an intern here. Hopefully I'll come back as the refuge's new ORP.

It was a fun going-away party. Plenty of ribbing about "my Sooners". Apparently when they do badly, they become my personal possession. For revenge, I'm going to call them "My Sooners" all next week after we kick the Longhorns back to Austin.

ps - the eagle picture was not taken by me (It's still too early!!) but it was taken at the refuge (same with the skunk pic). Makes you want to come out in a month to take your own bald eagle pictures, yes?

If this works, don't blame me!

(I love this picture. Can anyone tell me what is missing from this intersection? You know, besides pavement.)

Today has been a super fun day. I didn't think it would be when I woke up though. I am a notorious bear in the morning. I hate waking up and I loathe waking up before the sun. The perfect time to wake up, in my opinion, is several hours after the sun is up.

Think I picked the wrong career choice? Let me clarify. Once I have woken up and managed to drag myself out of the warm, clinging comfort of my bed, I'm okay. I was even energetic this morning. Course I had been awake for an hour, but nevertheless.

This morning I was off to Cherokee to teach 5th and 6th graders. Well. I taught the 6th graders. Curtis went with me because he tackles the 5th grade class. I would easily call it the most popular program that we offer. And that's because Curtis is the snake guy. He brings his collection of turtles, lizards, snakes, toads, and frogs (some of these he captures for the program and then he lets them go afterward). Now, none of the students get to hold the animals. That's where I come in. I hold them and walk around the class so they can pet or not pet as they choose. Except for the Prairie-lined Racerunner. That lizard stays in his container because if he gets away there's no getting him back. He's far too fast.

The best part of the 5th grade program for me are the snakes. Curtis brings several: his Speckled Kingsnake, his Prairie Kingsnake, his albino female Corn snake and his regular male Corn snake, his Bullsnake, and then today he also had the Western Ribbon snake - pictures are in the previous post. My favorite of those is the female corn snake. She just looks amazing - no pigment but the corn snake pattern still shows up. But I love her because she's one of those cool snakes that wraps herself all the way up your arm and squeezes. "DON'T LET GO OF ME," She seems to be saying - makes a girl feel loved. She's a pretty good size, can definitely take down a rat or two, and she's just fun to hold and play around with. She looks something like this:


My next favorite is the Speckled Kingsnake - and for about the same reasons. He is active and friendly (well, he was to me anyway) and very curious about the person holding him. But, more than that, he just looks amazing:

Do you wonder why he's called speckled? Another thing that I didn't know until I talked to the snake man - Kingsnakes (King Cobras, Prairie Kingsnakes, Speckled Kingsnakes, etc) are called such because they enjoy eating other snakes. In fact, they won't touch rodents unless they absolutely have to. They love snakes and lizards. Curtis's Speckled Kingsnake ate a rattlesnake once, and he got bit 4 times by the venomous snake in the process. But because they have evolved in an evolutionary arms race with the rattlesnake, the poison doesn't affect them (it's the same with TX horned lizards and Harvester ants.)


Here's some pictures of the other snake species Curtis brought this morning. I didn't take any of these snake pictures, more's the pity.

This is a Prairie Kingsnake

This is the regular pigmented Corn Snake (Big difference, no?)

And this is a Bull snake. What I love about bull snakes are they're eyes - something about they way they're marked make them look like "angry eyes" all the time.


So that was the 5th graders. The 6th graders were....obnoxious. That's the only word for it. And I have found that instead of yelling, I just become very sarcastic. Nothing too terribly mean; I just don't see much point in getting angry. And, I've found that if I can throw them off their balance, they'll pay a bit more attention. They're used to authority figures yelling at them and they expect it - they're obnoxious. Sarcasm or no though, these kids were tough to deal with. I'm afraid they didn't learn anything except how to play a habitat game with hula hoops. I asked the students what they learned. Responses had only to do with how to play the game, not the underlying theme of protecting habitat and making responsible choices. Sigh. Ah well.

In the fifth grade class there was one very enthusiastic and talkative boy. He had a hard time staying in his seat. Another student had asked Curtis how do you know whether a turtle is a boy or a girl. This little boy answered "That's easy. The boy is the one who gets on top."

...Oh the things children say!

Tomorrow is pre-K, 3rd and 4th, and I'm looking forward to it. The 3rd grade program (with the noisemakers and the predator/prey game) is by far my favorite.

Anyhow. I came back to the refuge and had a very busy afternoon. Curtis and I went out to Sand Creek Bay. Actually we went to the other side of the bay - the side I've never been to. We had to go through what the refuge calls "The Wilderness" (Ironic, isn't it? But apparently, a refuge's "wilderness" is defined as an area that isn't managed at all - it's just allowed to grow over. Our wilderness isn't allowed to do that, but we call it the wilderness anyway).

We went there to set up a camera. This camera will tape whatever is on the bay and. It rotates and swivels and does all kinds of fun things - but it's very fragile. And very expensive. "Don't drop that," Curtis tells me, "You have about $4,000 in your hands there." Curtis has been messing with these cameras for over a year now. They broke on him, and he spent hours on the phone with maintenance people in Alaska and California, replaced dozens of parts, and then finally shipped it back to Alaska so they could mess with it. All in all, he's pretty tired with the project. But. We have the cameras back now, supposedly fixed and ready to go. So we go out there to the bay where the two poles that hold the equipment were set up. We set up antennas, a solar panel (heavy and covered with spiders), a power box (heavy), a cable that runs from the cable box to the camera (that has a tendency to malfunction), and two car batteries. I had fun. Curtis's phrase was "pain in the ass". Haha. Can't say I blame him.

But the reason these cameras are so cool is they give a direct feed to a tv in the visitor's center. If/when this works, you can actually sit in the visitor's center and get a close up view of the birds on the bay during the winter months. For the summer, the camera gets moved out to Ralstin Island (the big natural rookery in the middle of the Salt Plains Reservoir). One of the antennas is a microwave antenna that feeds the info to another antenna here at Headquarters. That feeds into the tv here (I'm not sure how. But here's betting I'm going to find out soon!)

As we were stomping through the extremely tall grasses back to the truck, me carrying the extra tools and boxes we had, and Curtis carrying the 6 ft ladder we needed, Curtis was telling me more about all the problems he's had with this very fickle and fragile system. We were also talking about what we still needed to do tomorrow and he tells me, "Well. If this works, don't blame me!"

Haha. You got it!

New Snake

First of all, I would like to take a moment to point out that OU is still the greatest school ever, and we're not gonna let a fluke like the Colorado game kill our momentum. Meaning, of course, that Texas doesn't stand a chance this weekend. I will be down in Dallas personally this weekend to cheer the Sooners on to what I'm expecting to be an amazing victory.

Sorry - it's just that I'm about the only sooner fan on the refuge, while the rest of my esteemed co-workers are confirmed cowboys, raiders, or aggies. The only thing we really have in common is our shared disdain of that other Texas university. Yesterday was my day off even, and it still didn't stop a co-worker of mine from calling me: "How 'bout them Cowboys? Well, then how 'bout them Sooners!" (chuckle, chuckle) Sigh. I take it in the good fun it's presented in, but it still doesn't stop me from being a smidge defensive about my favorite college football team.

Anyway, back to biology.

This morning, I was busily searching through my environmental education boooks and Curtis walks in. His office is right next to mine and I can see his desk from where I sit. He gestures toward a small plastic container on his desk. "What's this?" he asks. Secure in my knowledge of refuge snakes, I saunter over there and pick it up. And quickly realize I have no idea. It's a small-ish snake, thin and whiplike. His scales are not smooth, his belly is plain, and his eyes are large (you know, for a snake). He has two white spots on top of his head, right next to each other. He has a black back with a narrow, orange vertebral stripe (meaning it runs down the center of his back - where his spine is). He also has lateral stripes on either side of the dorsal stripe, and those are pale.

Sounds intriguing, no? I take a stab at it, "Some type of garter snake?" But of course that's not it. I study it a moment further and say "Alright. I fail the test - what is it?" But he doesn't let me off that easy. He sends me off to find a reptile and amphibian field guide. The correct way to use a field guide is to "key" the species. Meaning, you flip to the snake key and it will say something like "Scales keeled - Group 1; Scales smooth - Group 2" In this instance I would flip to group 1 and it would give me another list of options "Plain belly - groups 5, 6, 7; Striped belly - groups 8, 9" You go to the corresponding group or groups, and choose from the options listed there (and so on and so forth). It sounds simple enough, but it takes forever and usually the authors of the field guides throw in terms that only an experienced and degreed herpetologist would know.

So. I use "keying" as a very last option. Instead. I turned to the plates (i.e. the picture section). Once I find one that looks a bit like the guy I have, I flip to the page the written description and distribution is on. What's great about this particular field guide is that with each description it also lists "similar species". So. I flipped through the pictures, and found one of a Texas Patchnose snake. It has the dorsal stripe and the same coloring. I flip to the page. The distribution is all wrong, and it's a lot longer than the guy I'm trying to identify. It also doesn't have the correct number of stripes. It's scales are also smooth, as this guy's scales are keeled. I look to the similar species - "garter and ribbon snakes have keeled scales..."

Aha! A clue! I go back to my pictures and look for the ribbon snakes. There are about five to choose from but only one picture I can really choose. The Western Ribbon snake. I was just reading his description when Curtis became impatient: "Well, what is it?" 95% I found the right one, I respond "Western Ribbon Snake." And, as expected, I am right.

Ego now firmly back in place, I saunter back over to Curtis' desk with my newly identified W. Ribbon snake. I ask him if this guy will bite me, and Curtis says no. I tell him I'm going to sue him if he's wrong. And gently pull the snake out of the container. Well, it does not bite me. Simply poops on me. Sigh. I suppose, after all the snakes I've handled the past 2 1/2 months, it was bound to happen sometime. It wasn't a lot, and I cleaned us up as best I could (you know, with him squirming and all). And then I took some pictures...







In the first, second, and last pictures you can see the keeled scales and the bright white spots on his head very well. It may look like just one spot, but there are two - just very close together. In the first picture you also can see the present this little guy gave me. Curtis is going to keep him until after tomorrow. And that is because starting tomorrow, Cherokee's EE programs will start. Curtis does the 5th grade program (easily the most popular program) and he shows off his reptiles and amphibians. I play Vana White for this program, carrying around the animals to all the students so they can get a closer look and touch - if they want. So, this Western ribbon snake is going to Cherokee tomorrow for a bit of show and tell.