Slitheringly Successful Cycling
Category: Local... Nature...
Posted Monday, May 28, 2007 at 09:07 PM [GMT-6]

[I realize that some (many? most?) of you find these posts distasteful, but you must realize that we're experiencing a pretty amazing year, weather-wise, which results in wildlife sightings that are unusual and demand to be documented. Please indulge me.]

We set out on a late afternoon bicycle ride, heading west toward a cloud bank on the horizon that's just now materializing overhead as an impending thunderstorm. The riding weather, however, was quite pleasant, as was the scenery. The pasture along Highway 191 is downright luxurious thanks to rainfall totals that border on record-setting. Those rains seem to have supercharged the whole ecosystem in these parts, as the entire food chain benefits.

This morning, for instance, we drove down an unpaved road south of town where the water has been standing in the bar ditches for days, and we could see the surface of that water apparently boiling. Upon closer scrutiny, we saw that literally hundreds upon hundreds of tadpoles inhabited those temporary ponds. We saw tiny frogs in equally manifold numbers out on the shooting range. And you must understand that where the small amphibians are, there too will eventually appear the larger reptiles.

Reptiles like this one, which we encountered about eight miles west of town on our ride:

If it looks a bit familiar, it's because of the resemblance to this one that we came upon about a week ago. It's a bull snake, about four feet in length. Unlike the last poor guy, I managed to coax this one off the roadbed and back into the relative safety of the pasture.

We remounted the bike and continued our ride, but less than a mile later we came across this one:

This one required a little more caution; it's a rattlesnake, about two feet long, and quite annoyed by my presence. I didn't get quite as close to it – they can strike a distance of about half their body length (or is it twice? note to self: this sort of uncertainty around venomous snakes is ill-advised; brush up on your research), but they're among the fastest strikers in the snake kingdom (ever wonder why "snake charmers" work with cobras? It's because they're sooooo slow. The snakes, not the charmers. Although that, too, is debatable.)

Anyway, once I snapped this photo, I jumped over and crushed his wee little head into a red paste on the ground, laughing maniacally at his death throes and the increasingly feeble warnings of his rattles. Not really. We actually watched him slither back into the pasture from which he had emerged, all of us happy to part company unscathed.

The remainder of the ride was uneventful – well, other than running over the gator. But that's another story for another day.

Update: Bob also had a close encounter of the rattler kind today over at his place in Stanton. And he did dispatch the creature with extreme prejudice. I don't blame him. It's one thing to find them in a pasture, well away from human life. It's quite another when they're in your back yard.