Since it is Rattlesnake Friday, this photo is looking out over the parking lot of the The Lodge of the Chiricahua Desert Museum. IT was just after sunrise, still kinda cool in the desert. Everyone in the lodge was asleep, except for me and this fella. You might recognize him. I had the pleasure to herp the Chiricahuas with Mark O'Shea once. Well, Mark and I woke early and went to take sunrise photos and that lucky bastard found a Mojave within seconds. Remember I mentioned everyone else in the lodge was asleep? Well half of them also did not know that a woman had joined their ranks. Oh yeah and most of them were not happy with the 5 am wake up call for just a Mojave, I mean they had seen several the night before. Mark wanted to photograph it better, so we had to find a bag, which woke the rest of the lodge. I helped Mark bag it and we ran into another herper staying in the other side, Jarron Lucas (RIP). He had several more mojaves and plopped them out for us to photograph. By the time Mark and I got back to our part of the lodge, we had a lot of disgruntled roommates for being woken up early, one Mojave hanging from a lamp so everyone saw the snake bag and a few startled older men shocked that a woman moved in while they slept.

A little side story, one of those surprised was Michael Dee, former keeper at the LA Zoo and the Book Guy at West Coast Shows. He became a wonderful friend over the years. When I got divorced and took Dan out to California and Mike met him for the first time, he looked at Dan with a smile and wink and just said "I slept with your girl before you did" and walked away giggling. I mean it was a multi-room condo, but it was so cute. Mike and Jarron were such great old school herpers I loved getting to spend time with and while many were inspired by Steve, I was more inspired by Mark. And to think this job gave me the chance to actually catch reptiles in the wild with THE Mark O'Shea and become actual friends with him.

No Rattlesnakes are actually visible in the photo. Just Mark trotting off to the mountains. And my memories of my time at Kingsnake. BTW this was after we bagged the first snake. He caught that with flip flops. Notice he has REAL boots on now.

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BE SURE TO GET ALL YOUR PHOTOS OFF THE SITE BEFORE WE GO DARK ASAP at gallery.kingsnake.com!