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.

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Successful though our trip to the Big Bend region of West Texas had been, Jake still didn't have an opportunity to hunt roadcuts for the fabled gray-banded kingsnake. Of course, since this was Jake's first trip to the "Bend" he was interested in photographing nearly anything he could and would see, be it a black widow or a crevice lizard.



But I was being a bit more selective. Having, over the years, found more than my share of gray-bands, I was primarily interested in finding a Texas lyre snake, a dweller of the rocky deserts and roadcuts that eluded me for the more than 60 years I sought it.

Guess what? It eluded me again just as the gray-band had so far eluded Jake. In fact, I was beginning to wonder whether we should be road-hunting rather than walking the cuts. Were we just wasting our time by walking? So far all we had seen was heavy traffic. But my outlook quickly changed when Jake, suddenly brought up short in mid-stride, stated "Milksnake" and asked "What kind is out here?"

My mind stopped working when I heard milksnake. I knew that the subspecies would be the beautiful New Mexico milk, Lampropeltis triangulum celaenops, a snake I had found elsewhere in its range but never in the Big Bend.

As I turned and hustled towards Jake I saw him bend and pick up a wriggling candycane, one of the prettiest New Mexican milks I have yet seen. I just couldn't imagine this subspecies getting much brighter than the example Jake was holding. When you check out the 3 accompanying pictures, I think you'll agree.

Our walk had suddenly taken on a far more favorable aspect.

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The fat shiner swam the 6' length of the 125 gallon aquarium in less than a second. It disappeared from this earth about 5 seconds later.

First I was watching it and thinking how gracefully it sped through and around the waterlogged snags. And even knowing the fish's purpose in the tank, I was unprepared for the speed and dexterity of that strike by the nearest tentacled snake, Erpeton tentaculatum.



The strike wasn't unexpected. I had been keeping and breeding tentacled snakes for several years. In fact, the only difference was that I had more than doubled the size of the shiners proffered. What had been unexpected was the speed - mere seconds were involved - with which the snake caught and swallowed the prey.

For those of you not familiar with the tentacled snake, it is a fully aquatic homolopsine species that occurs widely over Southeast Asia. It attains a length of two to two and a half feet and inhabits quiet, often silted waters. The genus contains only a single species with two distinctly different patterns, a blotched and a striped.

It is a live-bearing species. The "tentacles" (actually two short rostral projections), are sensory and seemingly assist the snake in locating their piscine prey in waters having limited visibility.

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"Stop!"

Seems like Jake hollers "stop" a lot when we're on the road. I haven't figured out whether that's because I'm always looking in the wrong places or because of my failing vision. Probably a little of both.

"That was a 'horny toad.' A baby horny toad!" Jake continued.



I was already backing up and sure enough, barely on the pavement, at grass edge, was a juvenile Texas horned lizard, Phrynosoma cornutum. And just behind it was another.

The stretch of road we were on was a bit north from the Rio Grande in western Texas. Over the years, I consistently found adult Texas horned lizards along this roadway. Although this strong and consistent population indicated that I was seeing a viable and reproducing population, until this trip I had not actually seen any juvenile examples.

But now, with two tiny post-hatchlings on the roadside there was no longer any question of whether or not the population was breeding.

Thanks, Jake.

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"Stop!" Jake hollered. There's a turtle on that rock. It's a slider! Oh and there's a couple of others swimming around the rocks."



We were on a curve on a narrow section of road on a bluff overlooking the Rio Grande. The road shoulder was only a couple of feet wide and even though traffic was light, I was nervous about stopping. I slowed, eased forward, and just as I was about to suggest that Jake hop out with his camera and I would find a parking spot and walk back, the shoulder widened slightly and I was able to stop safely.

Both Jake and I were happy about this opportunity, for earlier, as we had begun to focus on a distant slider at another pull-off, the turtle had dropped from its basking snag into the silted water and was gone.

These, on the other hand, rather than having already basked and warmed were just hauling out of the river to begin a new basking sequence. Hopefully, this would provide us a second opportunity for photos. And it did.

Adults of the Big Bend slider, Trachemys gaigeae, are rather small, attaining a length of only 6 to 8 inches. This taxon has 2 discrete red spots behind each eye and an extensive dark figure on the plastron.

Its range in the USA is discontinuous in the Rio Grande (and some tributaries and nearby waterholes) from the Big Bend of Texas to central New Mexico.

Since this is a long ways from our homes we were happy to be afforded the photo ops offered by the cooperative turtles. We may try to upgrade next year, but for now consider these pictures more than adequate.



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Two subspecies of bark anoles, Anolis distichus, once were identifiable in south Florida. These were the brown to gray Florida bark anole, A. d. floridana, and the green bark anole, A. d. dominicensis.



Wherever and whenever the two came together, they readily interbred until the characteristics of the bark anoles in Florida were so muddled that in most cases the subspecies were no longer readily identifiable. The resulting intergrades were (and are) most like the Florida subspecies with an occasional individual being a pasty greenish-gray.

Then in August 2014, a friend posted some pictures of bark anoles he recently found and his comments regarding their color changing abilities were of interest. He said that most in this small population were on mossy barked trees and although typically dark colored, when feeding on the small ants of which their diet largely consists, a few temporarily assumed a decided green coloration.

I asked for and received 2 males that he collected when they were at their greenest (these were returned and released back into the colony), but in the week that I had them - skewed by capture and captivity - this is what I learned:

More than 99% of the time the lizards were dark brown. In fact, as far as I know, one never assumed green of any shade. But on one night, and only on that night, while sleeping, one of the bark anoles did assume a green color.

At dusk that night it was dark brown.

At midnight it was still dark brown.

At 2:00AM it was light brown.

At 2:30AM it was bright green.

At 2:38AM, after I took a couple of pictures, disturbing the lizard only with the flash, it was again a very dark brown.

To the best of my knowledge it never again, while captive, assumed the green color.

If the color is this fleeting in the wild, it is no wonder we don't see many green colored bark anoles in south Florida.

I hate the picture in a cage, but it's a lot better than having no record at all. Now it's time to head for Miami and try for photos of the lizards in situ.

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Ohhhhhh, OK. You can call it the Rio Grande if you choose.

In fact, that is usually what I call this heavily silted river which is the border between Texas and several Mexican states. Jake and I were observing the river in the Big Bend region of West Texas. What caught our attention was a sizable, distant, emergent snag on which 2 turtle species, a soft-shell and a slider, were quietly basking in the August sunshine.



Air temperature, already 100 degrees Fahrenheit, would rise another several degrees before the setting of Sol would allow temperatures to first stabilize and then begin a slow--a very, very slow--drop. This was, after all, the Chihuahuan Desert.

There was a wide spot in the river and the snag on which the turtles rested was far enough away to tax the maximums of our cameras and lenses. There seemed no way to get closer. Jake was particularly concerned for both species were "lifers" for him.

Despite the distance, the slider dropped into the river and was immediately lost to sight as we positioned ourselves. That was frustrating. But the soft-shell, the Texas subspecies of the spiny soft-shell, Apalone spinifera emoryi, seemed to make itself more comfortable. It sat quietly, moving only its head and neck, as we snapped photo after photo. Out of the many snapshots several proved usable. It was a well spent half hour.

Now to find the slider again.

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Jake and I have just returned from 10 days in the Big Bend region of West Texas. This was Jake's first sojourn to the area and my first return in about 20 years. We had a great time and are already plotting next year's visit. We talked in some detail about locales and targets (both herps and birds) and had a fair idea of what we hoped to find.



Jake's list was simple. He wanted to see and photograph at least one of everything. We didn't even come close! My list of half a dozen herp and 2 bird species was a bit more specific. It was topped with the Chihuahuan lyre snake, Trimorphodon vilkinsonii, (on this we failed) and ended with a colorful male of the Southwestern earless lizard, Cophosaurus texanus scitulus, (on this we succeeded).

At a length that occasionally exceeds 7 inches, the Southwestern earless lizard is marginally the largest of the earless clan in the United States. When suitably warmed, it is also the most colorful. During the breeding season, the pinks, greens, blues and black of the dominant males must be seen to be truly appreciated.

Should you be traveling in southeastern Arizona, southern New Mexico, or western Texas, be sure to look them up. And have your camera ready. You'll certainly want a photo.

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It was more than 10 years ago that I found my first Everglades Burmese python, Python molurus bivitattus. A little over 7 feet in length, the snake was crawling slowly across the roadway and rather than trying to escape when we neared, it simply coiled slightly and stopped crawling. At no time did it display the slightest hostile behavior.



About a year and a half later, I found a second example. Like the first, although larger, this one showed no hostility causing me to ask myself "what is with these pythons?"

Another 2 years passed and I found a third python, a 5 footer, that was a little feisty - but only a little.

In August of 2011, I found a fresh DOR hatchling, still well within the Everglades, but outside the boundaries of the National Park.

And then in 2014, a friend and I found a 10 footer: an underweight male that was far more interested in avoiding us than in confrontation.

5 pythons in over ten years found during more than 25 Everglades sojourns that had pythons as at least one of the target species. That's not very many. Admittedly these were only road sightings and well over 1,500 of the big snakes have been documented, removed, and euthanized.

I didn't hike through choice python habitat, which according to experts is nearly anyplace you chose to hike. As most recent trips drew to a close without the sighting of even one python, I couldn't help but think of the great and much lauded FWC sponsored python hunt of 2013. This fiasco, dubbed a success by the "experts," turned up only 68 pythons which was the cumulative result achieved by almost 1,600 hunters over a period of nearly a month.

Over the last 10 years, I have seen several Burmese pythons in Florida's Everglades. Except for a single DOR hatchling, those I have seen were between 5 and 12 feet in length. Whether you call this unfortunate or fortunate, it is a fact. Although there is no question that pythons should not exist in Florida, since they are here due stupidity or accident I am glad that I have had the opportunity to make their acquaintance.

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