Category: Reptiles

The reptiles include snakes, lizards, turtles, and alligators. Cold-blooded animals thrive in the warm weather of the southern US.

Weekly Photo Challenge: A very forgiving Pigmy Rattlesnake

This week’s photo challenge was “Beneath Your Feet.”

Pigmy Rattlesnake
Pigmy Rattlesnake

Pigmy rattlesnakes always look disgruntled, but this one has a really good reason!

It blended in so well, and I was paying so little attention, that I didn’t see it until I was bringing my foot down. I didn’t have time to stop it. I stepped right on it, trying at the last instant not to put too much weight on it.

Next thing I knew, I was standing about six feet away. I think I made an inarticulate squeak as I jumped away.

The snake never tried to strike at me. It just coiled up tighter and glared. I took a quick photo and then I left it alone. Every stick and leaf looked like a snake for the rest of the day.

Gopher Tortoise

The gopher tortoise is large, as North American land turtles go, but it does not stand out.

Adult Gopher Tortoise
Adult Gopher Tortoise

It’s slow-moving, grayish-tan, close to the ground, and when not moving it resembles a smooth, dome-shaped rock. On top of that, it spends a good part of its time underground. The tortoise is most visible when actively digging, as a fountain of sand flies up behind its claws.

The burrow is easier to find than the tortoise itself. The burrow of a mature tortoise can be spotted from a long distance in the hot, sunny, sandy habitat it prefers. A tortoise burrow is a crescent-shaped hole in the ground, with a wide mound of sand called an apron in front. These burrows go all the way down to the water table, so they stay relatively cool and moist in summer, and relatively warm in winter. This makes them an ideal refuge for many other species, and the tortoise doesn’t seem to mind sharing. Over 350 species have been found in gopher tortoise burrows 1. Personally, I have seen frogs, snakes, mice, beetles, and once a skunk.

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