It was pleasant, in the low 50s, and the sun was trying desperately to break through. Being the fools that we are, we decided to look at some known dens to see if any snakes were poking their heads out. The obvious spots were bare, as expected. In the Valley of Nerodia, I wanted to check a known den exit just to see if a Water Snake noggin was popping out. No... but when I looked down toward a trickle of water, I saw this.
It looked pretty frozen so I broke our cardinal den site rule and picked it up. Yup... pretty stiff. Dead. Until the tongue came out. It then coiled tightly into my warm hand.
I'm not sure what was going on here. Perhaps, this Garter left the den to go down for a quick drink and found it colder than expected. At any rate, it warmed up a bit in my hand and I put him back down into the leaves and left him alone.
Not a bad sight for December 15th.
We'd been noticing frost under logs so we didn't bother flipping many. Rocks were a better bet so we went to an area that we like and carefully flipped a few. Much to our delight, there were plenty of Redbacks there.
We didn't encounter any more animals out in the woods but walked on for a while longer. It did our souls (and colds) a lot of good to get some fresh air and nature. After about 45 minutes, we found ourselves back in the Valley of Nerodia on the way out. Our little pal had headed up the hill towards a known Garter den entrance.
I like to think that our gentle handling warmed him up enough to find his way back. Probably not but shut up... let me have some fun here.
That was that.
One more cool thing, though.
After some shopping, we were pulling into a strip mall parking lot and I saw a Raptor cruise over head and land next to a pizzeria. I drove into their lot and went toward the back where the bird had gone. I got my lifer Dumpster Hawk!
Actually, a Cooper's Hawk, #106 on the year. Probably rodent hunting back there.
Getting out of the house in December never felt so good.
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