One of my favorites activities and can be one of the most productive ways to find snakes.

Sites like this in the spring are like like Saturday kickoffs in the fall to me:

One man's nightmare is another man's paradise.

I think my dislike of these things has to do with the fact that I was always assigned the crap work like this. I was always the lowest on the totem pole. Need somebody to check to see if the electric fence is hot, lets let George get the crap shocked out of him. Sewer pipe clogged, lets send the Polack in the hole to figure out what's the problem.

Me - "hey there's a big black snake down here, I'm coming back up".

Old farts above - "lets put the lid back on this man hole and make him sweat a little bit."

Good times.

I'm not a herper persay, but I came to like snakes over the last 20ish years. Growing up, and up until my Junior year at A&M, I was honestly in the "only good snake is a dead snake" school of thought. Summer of '97 I was the Nature Director at a scout camp, part of my job was maintaining live animal displays, including 3 rattlesnakes. Much to my shock at the time, the rattlesnakes were downright docile. I ended working that August in Philmont's backcountry (Dean Cow), and there were a lot of rattlesnakes that were borderline pets. I had one that lived under my tent platform. Part of the morning ritual was look under bed, then tap the platform to get the snake to sound off (occasionally you got more than one).

Going more professional, my graduate work was down at Sinton. Due to my odd work schedule, my tech and I ran into rattlers several times a week. Again, they were docile as hell, and only struck when I was jacking with them. One morning I thought something was wrong with the truck, and told my tech to check the truck later. As he drove away, I realized there was a coiled rattler between my feet happily buzzing away, but it never did anything. That started my general snake karma I like to stay on the good side of.

I spent almost 12 year with TPWD officed out of Cedar Hill SP. Turns out SW Dallas County has a LOT of rattlesnakes. The area also has some of the largest diamondbacks in the state (not kidding). Had a 10 day period where we found 4 rattlers inside the office. With my new job, I can find copperhead on a daily basis if I feel so inclined.

Boiled down, I got habituated to snakes and figured out that my upbringing of "the only good snake is a dead snake" thought process was severely misguided. The last 15 years of his life my dad did a complete 180 on snakes. My soon to be 7 year old son has never seen me kill a snake, and likely won't. We spend a LOT of time at the zoo (at least once a month), and he is in the field with me a lot. He has seen multiple rattlers, copperheads and rat snakes with me, and can ID snakes better than most of the OB (I seriously believe this some times).

Yeah, your son would definitely know what a rat snake, water moccasin, and copperhead are (among the most mis-identified snakes on the OB).

Oh he gets mad when I bother him to show him a TA snake thread. Before I open the thread, "It's a rat snake, it's always a rat snake". But he loves this thread when something new pops up....granted, I have to be more careful now that he can also read.

Honest question.....notorious how?

B.I.G.

Here's a few of the snakes I've encountered thus far this summer:

Not sure what this is(Guadalupe River):


Or this(Guadalupe River):


Red racer/coachwhip at Big Bend:


Rattlesnake I found inside of a bar in College Station:

Hey! I've seen that last one!