Poke in Nose, Day Three. 5-26-2019

The Petting Zoo. Everybody knows it. Every Steve Irwin wannabe visits there and pretends to be a real field herper. It is easy to have success there but, like Snake Road (a place I have no desire to visit), it can get over-populated with habitat-destroying snake seekers.

Still, we figured if we hit it early enough, we might beat the crowd and see a few animals. Well, we sure got there early enough. Perhaps too early.

It was still a bit cool and the sun hadn't warmed things up yet. That said, it was supposed to get pretty hot later in the day.

We walked along, peeking in crevices and behind bushes and flipping the occasional piece of low-hanging fruit. My fingertips were shredded so I didn't try many stones. We noticed that (surprise, surprise) most of the rocks and logs had been displaced anyway, probably by some kid in search of Facebook likes... I mean snakes. We finally saw a nice American Toad for our first animal of the day.


That had taken quite a while... we seem to be the only ones who have shit luck at this place. Oh well, I'm getting old and the eyesight (and temper) ain't what it used to be. Worst of all, we saw a couple of kids about 150 yards ahead of us running rampant... they had cut in on us.

This isn't a great photo of a 5-lined Skink, but it is amusing because he was running full-tilt and some of his legs are in the air.


About an hour and a half in, we saw our first snake, a gorgeous Copperhead who had just come out to grab some daylight.


That's about as pretty as an animal can get.

We moved forward and noticed the two kids had turned back. Evidently, they had reached the fabled turn-around spot already. They were cool enough to come say hey and told us of a fat Timber that we should run into shortly. We mentioned our Copper to be fair. I am nothing if not honorable. They went on, then we saw them jump off the track... a train was coming. We were stuck where we were.


I saw no fat Timber. I hurriedly walked on, as we didn't know if it was totally legal to be where we were and the train engineer saw us. I started to get very paranoid. Andrea, with her head much clearer than mine at all times, spotted a (the?) fat Timber, who had obviously retreated away from the tracks and the long, thundering train.

I snuck up in front of her for a better shot and got rattled at. Oops... sorry.

That's a belly full of cute.

These two were inside the tracks. Obviously, nothing bothered them, not even a long, thundering train.

I moved them off to the side. I don't think they knew I did it. They were preoccupied.

We started rushing to find a place to get off the tracks. I had no idea how far we'd gone but we finally found a slope we could get down. It turns out, we were close to "the wall"... snake fancier's Valhalla. We peeked up and saw nothing there, of course. It took Andrea's clear head to calmly look around and see that there was a Timber hiding all up in there. She got her camera right... down... in the ACTION.


I was pretty tuckered out by now and took a sexy break by the water.

Shut up! I was burnt to a crisp from the day before and needed that hat!

Even though we had reached "that spot", Andrea wanted to walk further in. My old ass reminded her that the further in we go, the further we'd have to walk back. She shut me up by showing me another Timber.


And then a little undulating Copper coil.


I was resting again when she saw a Water Snake sunning outside of the wall.


I finally convinced her to turn back and tried to impress her by finding a Timber.

But this was just the last one she'd found, repositioned.

This little Water Snake is a sad one... might have some mouth rot. He needs a shed or six, as well.


An American Toad on a rock overlooking a stream. Lord of the castle.


Here's one in the wall. It's not just for snakes anymore.


We took a rest in the grass. I lay down and got a few ticks in me. From a distance, I saw a skink running on the wall and got this shot.


I still hadn't contributed any Timbers to the day but I saw this Copper.


While coming over to photograph it, Andrea saw a nearby Timber. That one hurt.

I mean, how close can you get? They're on opposite sides of the rectangular rock.


This might be my favorite rock wall shot... a small Garter pretending to be a viper.


Rain was moving in rapidly, which was fine by me. I was roasty. Andrea spotted the last Copperhead, a low-to-the-ground stunner.


I suspect this will be our last visit to this place.

We made it to the car before it started raining too hard and then got some lunch. We'd already walked over 8 miles but were we done? Evidently not. We made our way to one more spot in a torrential downpour. No worries: we were headed to a stream place to look for Wood Turtles and salamanders. It eventually stopped, anyway.

No lie... I love stream salamandering more than most other forms of being outside. The cool water, the sound of the water, the thrill of seeing an animal whose needs are so damn weird. I love it. I rushed right to the streamside and found our FOY Northern Dusky, heretofore known as Dookies.


We were in Dookie Central.


We have to travel at least 45 miles to see a Dook in Massachusetts. Having such a rich vein of them is heaven.

We searched through the fields and seeps and marshy, boggy areas for a half hour/ 45 minutes but we were unable to find a Wood Turtle. So we got back up to the trail to look for salamanders. A bright Redback was next.


One of my targets for this trip was the Slimy Salamander, a Plethodon that we do not get in MA. I was very excited with this specimen.


The next one was less spotted but he was huge. At least I think it's a Slimy.


We got down to our spot, a bridge a little less than a mile in, and hit the stream-side. We got our target fairly quickly, our FOY Spring Salamander. He still has some frilly gills but is already about 5 inches long.



We continued looking around, now more determined than ever to get a Two-lined Salamander. They had outsmarted me more times than I could count this weekend. I tried but I failed. But in failure, I photographed many Dooks. (I thought the first two little ones were Two-lines until I saw them with the flash.)





Then Andrea once again became my hero. First with the Timbers, now with the Two-line.

Our eleventh species on the day.

A portrait of my hero. Wearing plastic.


One last Slimy before we hit the road.


We also saw a pair of Cimbex americana (Elm Sawfly-thanks, Teá!) getting busy while we were on the way to the car.


So in over 10 miles of hiking on the day, we'd seen a good amount of animals. We added four salamanders to the weekend count, bringing our reptile and amphibian species total to 22. And we still had a few hours the next morning before hitting the road for home.

Of course, we have a lot more fun with friends but our time together is a treasure and we felt like we had a pretty good day, going at our own pace and not holding anyone up. But the bed sure felt amazing that night.