Unbelievable Luck

While climbing in Lake Tahoe, my brother and I saw something I would never have imagined seeing. I was walking along a small trail when I heard an alarm call coming from some sort of squirrel. It sounded like a squirrel trying to distract me aways from its babies. After not being able to find the source of the sound, I looked down at my feet and saw not only my FIRST rubber boa on the crawl (all previous boas had been flipped under boards) but a rubber boa that was squeezing the life out of its freshly caught meal, a huge chipmunk!! I can't explain how psyched I was, so I'll just post the photos.

We also saw a bear that was treed by some dogs! Sadly, I only had my super wide angled zoom lens at the time:

Summer 2012

So much happened this summer that there are too many words to write, so here are mainly just the photos.

More San Mateo rattlers:

Then it was off to the East Coast! First, in Northern Florida, I finally saw my a Gopher Tortoise and got a cool shot of an anole:

Next I spent a week in Georgia working with Loggerhead Sea Turtles and I happened on many other cool herps:

There was a pond filled with 4-8 baby gators that were very fun to watch. They rarely showed any change in behavior due to my presence and I was able to watch them learn how to catch frogs!

Mom always made sure to show herself if we got to close:

Here is what they were after: Southern Leopard Frogs

Then I saw some really neat behavior. A snake I had been dying to see (Black Racer) showed up right on the pond's edge and the baby gators were clearly interested.

One lunged and grabbed the snake by the very tip of the tail. The gator barely had a hold of the snake, but proceeded to drag it into the pond and swim with it:

In the end, the gator realized the snake was too big for it and let it go, practically unharmed. 

Here is one final non-herp photo taken from Georgia: