Not a Moccasin

After target practice at the range, we took some dirt roads to get home the long, scenic way. We were looking for passion vine to get some eggs and caterpillars to grow some gulf fritillary butterflies in my kindergarten classroom. We didn’t have any luck with that but we had an adventure anyway.

I was out of the truck picking a few branches of early goldenrod, when B said, “Come here!” As I have said before, that means “grab your camera and get here fast if you want any shots!”

Yep, it was a snake. This one we were not absolutely sure about until we got home and looked at the pictures. It is a dusky pigmy rattlesnake, sometimes called a ground rattler. This one was large for one: about twenty inches long. And a feisty twenty inches it was!

Nice pattern.

Here is the zoom that shows the tiny rattles on the tail.

Here is a better look at the head---or as B says, two heads (counting the shadow).

I called this entry “Not a Moccasin” because of the five we have had in our yard since last summer. Guess we can be thankful not to have pigmies, too.