I Hate to be a Cheater, But... 8-27-2025

One good thing about my job of 35 years is that I got to work with my pal Ryan for the last 12 or 15 or so of them. He, like me, is a snake fan and one of the first things we learned about each other is that we like to go out and look for our native snakes. We'd even cut out of work early a couple of times to do so. Now that we're both unemployed, we are still trying to find time to hitch up.

Ryan asked if we'd like to do a Copperhead run in Norfolk County but the only time we'd be able to do it was on a Wednesday while Andrea was at work. With her permission, I accepted the challenge.

We met at noon and headed up the path and eventually got to our spot. High up in the sun, we figured Copperhead Moms would still be baking their (live-born) babies. It wasn't long before Ryan called me  and I ran to see one speeding back under a rock. No decent photos, but it's always exciting to see such a gorgeous animal.

Not too much later, I saw a small Copper curled up next to a rock. It was a very tough shot and I'm not very happy with the ones I got but at least it's something.

We looked around some lower levels for a while to no avail. I was sweating like a pig and had to take a few "whoa- slow down, heart" breaks. We'd hoped to add a Racer to the sights but had no such luck. Eventually, we both started to move back to the sunny top. I was looking over towards where I'd seen the last one when Ryan called that he'd found another. While running towards his voice, I saw this one the way... all flattened for optimum sun catching.

Holy crap! I marked the spot from above with a piece of refuse on top of the rock and sped toward his voice.

It's fair to say that he definitely had the find of the day.

You just don't get many chances to see such perfection.

Back to the one that I'd seen on the way, we saw that she had come out and reinflated.

We were pretty happy with a four snake-sighting day in Massachusetts so we headed back to the path, always keeping our eyes open and staying alert. Back on the path, I rolled a log and there was a very small Marbled Salamander there for some icing on the cake.

Not a bad two and a half hours. I feel bad that Andrea didn't get to see these things but we'll go back in October some time when it's cooler and hope that she too can check Copperheads off of the 2025 list. It's always a treat to be in the field with Ryan and we certainly are happy with our finds.