Kris gets revenge on a neonate Whipsnake.

uhhh

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During the early summer I went to Idaho to visit some friends, and took the opportunity to route a ‘herpable’ route back home. I did what I could, and managed to turn up a few Great Basin Gophersnakes (Pituophis catenifer deserticola) along the way.

An antelope running from me:

antelope

Great Basin Gophersnake

Great Basin Gophersnake

Great Basin Gophersnake

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… continued from part 1, 2 and 3.

In the morning we went to see the caves. I’ll keep this post separate, since it’s a lot of cave pictures, and this site isn’t called caveexplorer.com.

Carlsbad Caverns

Carlsbad Caverns

Carlsbad Caverns

Carlsbad Caverns

Carlsbad Caverns

Carlsbad Caverns

Carlsbad Caverns

Carlsbad Caverns

If you want to see more, I uploaded the full set to my Flickr account.

That’s it for this one! I have a few more posts to go.

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I haven’t been herping in awhile now. It’s hot, dry, and my gas budget has gone to visiting old friends and an upcoming trip to see my parents in New Mexico. I did manage to find a couple of Great Basin Gopher Snakes (Pituophis catenifer deserticola) while driving through Utah, but that’s about it. With the dry air and expensive gas, it’s best for me to just wait for the rain. Maybe I’ll sort through some of the scenery and non-herp shots I’ve taken in the last few weeks and throw them up to fill in the gaps.

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The herping has been on pause these last few weeks. In late May, Kris and I had quite a trip down to the South East part of the state and really didn’t see much of anything. The air is extremely dry at this time of year, leaving a lot of reptiles in their holes until things become a little more favorable with the rains in late July or so. With gas so expensive, I’d rather just wait it out and then go crazy for a few weeks when I’m likely to see things.

Here’s a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake rescued awhile back from a home in Cave Creek. Nothing spectacular about this guy except how old it seemed. The tail was very long, and had broken off long ago, and was STILL one of the longest rattles I’d seen. He had a great temperment, and never struck or really rattled to speak of.

Crotalus atrox

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

Crotalus atrox

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Superstition Mountains, Arizona

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I know it’s not field herping, but the babies started coming out of their eggs today and I had to take some pictures.

Here they are coming out and opening their eyes for the first time.

Bearded Dragons Hatching

Here they are with my ipod shuffle for size comparizon.

Baby Bearded Dragons

Here’s one that’s about 20 minutes old on his dad’s head. He isn’t sure what to think of them, other than that they probably look delicious.

Tiny Bearded Dragon with His Dad

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I’m unfortunately stuck at home sick on the first really nice, herp-friendly weekend of the year. That leaves my pets to be the subject of lots and lots of bad photos while I practice with my new toys.

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I got my new camera today and it took me about two hours to unwrap everything, charge the battery, and get my first picture taken with the thing. My assumption that I’ll be needing to take a photography class or two is correct.

Anyway, the first two pictures were of the dog and a lizard, since those were the only somewhat interesting things around.

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Unrelated to herping other than in nomenclature, I’ve launched a Web site for my graphic design work. If you know anyone looking for pro-level creative services of any type, send them to zigbotmedia.com. I guess I could mention here that the logo and name are in honor of our pretty yellow female bearded dragon, Zigbot, shown below. When I drew the logo originally, she was fairly young and really feisty at all times. Now she’s a big fat slug of a lizard who’s lost the devious face I had in mind. Oh well, nice memories.

Wow, I just spammed my own site. I’m not sure how to feel about that.

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Kelly and I moved into a new house last week. My free time will thus be spent pulling tape from boxes and crushing fingertips for the remainder of this season, unfortunately. Hopefully I’ll get out to the new-to-me mountains I see to the West each morning to catch some herps laying out in the last warmth of the year. If not, I’ll begin posting again in February or so.

This year has been good. I’ve added many animals to my life-list: C. molossus, C. lepidus klauberi, C. cerberus, C. Willardi, Gyalopion canum, Thamnophis cryptosisotalus, and Heloderma suspectrum. The molossus was my first find of the year, while the tigris was my last.

My goals for next year include getting out to Eastern New Mexico to look for anything within range of my parent’s new home, and perhaps a trip to Costa rica. Who knows.

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