An unsuspected gray-band

It had been another 109 degree day in Texas's Big Bend. Not only had the day been hot, but a couple of hours after sundown the heat of the day was still palpable. As it approached 11:00PM, the thermometer was still registering 99 degrees Fahrenheit. But at least at 50 miles per hour we had a breeze on these mountain roads.

On this, our last night in the Big Bend region, we were varying our tactics. We'd drive a while, then check a couple of roadcuts, then drive some more. By midnight the temperature had plummeted - to 97 degrees Fahrenheit. Pocket mice and kangaroo rats skittered and hopped across the roadway. My search for a Texas lyre snake continued, but showed little promise of fulfillment. I worked one side of a roadcut. Jake worked the other. I found a female black widow with egg cases, Jake found a...

Well, I didn't know exactly what Jake found until well after the fact. In a kidding manner, Jake had mentioned finding an iconic gray-banded kingsnake, Lampropeltis alterna, at the end of the cut but I hadn't seen it. Although he continued to kid, I somehow failed to take him seriously - and he still hadn't shown me the snake!

He did flash his light at me a few times, just before I returned empty-handed to the car. I thought he just wanted to be picked up. So that's what I did. I picked him up and we made another run out the road and back. It was still a roasting night and even at 2:30AM the only snakes we saw were a few western diamondbacks and a single juvenile Mohave.

The next day during the long drive home we compared notes and Jake made a comment or two about gray-banded kingsnakes. The comments went right over my head. In only a matter of hours we were unloading Jake at his house and he was grinning all the while like a Cheshire Cat!

At the end he made some comment like, "Whoops. I forgot that bag in back of my seat. Could you get it and check it for me?" I could and did. Gray-banded kingsnake. A big one. A beauty of the gray banded phase. I was the last to know. Hoodwinked! Jake was laughing so hard at my amazement that he could hardly stand.

Our trip had been even better than I had known.

More photos below...

Author, photographer, and columnist Richard Bartlett is one of the most prolific writers on herpetological subjects in the 20th century. With hundreds of books and articles to their credit, Richard and his wife Pat have spent over four decades documenting reptiles both in the field and in captivity. For a list of their current titles, please visit their page in our bookstore.