A portrait of the beautiful green vine snake.

Get it Carl, get it! And although Carl tried, really tried, the snake beat him across the clearing and once in the water of the coche (oxbow) it was gone forever. The snake was a green vine snake, Oxybelis fulgidus, and Carl? Well he knows who he was.

But there is one thing that we watchers are still trying to figure out. While we were standing on the high ground talking to Carl he was fully clothed. Then 100 feet or so away the vine snake made its appearance.

Seconds later, when in hot pursuit of the snake Carl plunged into the silted water of the Amazon coche, he was wearing only his skivvies and his outer clothing was strewn along the pursuit path. How had he accomplished this seeming feat of magic?

I’m not going to show you a photo of Carl or his discarded clothing but here are a few pix of the snake species that caused the uncanny unclothing occurrence.

Juvenile Baja California rat snakes are prominently patterned.
In May of 1984, 2 miles east of Mountain Spring, Imperial County, California, a dead snake was found on Interstate 8. The snake was a Baja California rat snake, Bogertophis rosaliae. The finding of this specimen, before and since unknown to occur in the USA, then stirred much controversy. Controversy continues today with some researchers believing this locality to be genuine, but with the lack of other examples of this snake species north of the border causing other researchers to question the validity of the find.

There is, however, no question that the Baja rat snake, is a common species along almost the entire length of the peninsula for which it was named. And it is still hoped that its presence in the USA will someday be confirmed.

While hatchlings and juveniles of the Baja California rat snake are blotched dorsally, the adults of this bug-eyed snake, whether olive, lavender, or orange, are unicolored.

The genus Bogertophis is bitypic, with the only other species in the genus being the much better known Trans-Pecos rat snake, B. subocularis.