Shame, it was a sweet snake. Sweet looking, anyway. I can't speak for its disposition, though. :-) On a serious note, next Thursday's looking like a beautiful possible coachwhip day. It's supposed to be like 68 for the high, about 20% precipitation, sunny. I'm thinking about hitting ha ha tonka again. Kevin

hey viridis. that is true about the 17 species of geckos there is alot more than that there are just about every reptile that you can think of. and more trust me from collecting in the everglades. i seen a lot and know that people let lose rep. and so do the reptile wholesellers let lose a lot of reptiles. so ther is a lot not reported yet. this can turn into a problem later on. but is nice to look at while hunting reptiles. none???????????????????????????????

personally, I love the shot of the Black Rat crossing the road. It reminds me of the adrenaline rush I get when I see a snake up ahead on a road or trail.

Late summer can be a great time to observe pit vipers that are held up under rookery rocks incubating and birthing their offspring. Ryan and I made a trip on Sept. 1st to do just this. Below is a report of our trip taken from Ryan's website ( http://www.thies-times.com/serpentryan/homepage.html ) followed by photos by myself. Mike Cravens and I had a hankering to find a timber rattlesnake or two. We headed over to a place in Montgomery County Missouri. Almost immediately we were greeted with a very lovely find. Mike got a hand on my first ever western slender glass lizard. After the photo session we continued. Not too long after that I spotted an adult copperhead in a rock crevice. Mike came over to take a look himself and pointed out the four juvenile copperheads that also shared the crevice. Apparently upon picture comparison, I found the same adult copperhead on May 3, 2003 under a nearby rock. Once the photo session was over we continued. While checking a crevice, Mike flipped a juvenile hog-nosed snake. We took our photos and moved on. The last find occurred just as it was getting dark. Mike peered into a crevice and saw yet another adult copperhead. Also present were several neonate sheds. As Mike continued to look for more snakes, I poked around the edge of the crevice. Moments later I scared up a neonate copperhead in the process of shedding its skin. I called Mike over and I got my pictures. That proved to be the last snake of the day. It was a fantastic outing. The totals were 7 osage copperheads and 1 eastern hog-nosed snake. A total of 8 snakes. Mike