Friday, June 03, 2022

Brief encounter

These warm afternoons. I passed three gartersnakes basking at the side of the trail. The first two saw me first. The third thought she* was well enough hidden by the grass.

Common gartersnake,Thamnophis sirtalis.

I moved around to get a view of her head without the grass, and ...

One quick writhe, and she was gone.

*Female gartersnakes are larger than the males. This one was a good size, as gartersnakes go.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
En estos dias un poco más calurosos, las serpientes salen a asolearse. Vi tres al lado del camino; las primeras dos me vieron primero. La tercera creyó que el pasto le escondía.

Es la serpiente de jarretera común Thamnopsis sirtalis. Cuando cambié de posición para verle la cara, se agitó y desapareció en un instante.

Probablemente es hembra: las hembras son más grandes que los machos.

2 comments:

  1. He remember being a child (4 or 5 years old) in the suburbs of Seattle and seeing gartersnakes all the time. I used to love to catch them and play with them... until I caught one that didn't want to be handled and it bit me. I didn't play with them much after that!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I used to catch garter snakes, too. Carried them around, brought them home. (Mom was not pleased.) None ever tried to bite me, though. These days, the ones I see are too fast for me. Or I'm too slow.

      Delete

I'm having to moderate all comments because Blogger seems to have a problem notifying me. Sorry about that. I will review them several times daily, though, until this issue is fixed.

Also, I have word verification on, because I found out that not only do I get spam without it, but it gets passed on to anyone commenting in that thread. Not cool!

Powered By Blogger