We encountered two Great Basin gopher snakes on our trip. The first was as tame and quite as any corsnake I've ever held... quite unexpected based on my prior experience with this group of animals. He had quite a bit of tan and cream colored, with nice brown saddles. He was basking on some large man-placed boulders lining a small boat launch where we parked our vehicles down by the river. Interestingly, he was spotted by the least snake-enthusiastic member of our trip, and was the first snake we found as well.











The second gopher was found in the same general area, crawling along a sandy beach by the Columbia river. This guy was a bit more hissy, but still no biting or musking.







Western sagebrush lizards were pretty much under almost every overturned rock or log; fascinating little lizrds, and extremely quick. They look like tiny fish swimming across the surface of the sand.











Finally, the big boys. We found two northern pacific rattlesnakes. The first I spotted sitting under a bush along a small path through some sagebrush just up from the river. Unfortunately, this guy seemed to have had a run in with some nasty creature, and had a large flap of skn torn away, exposing muscle and bone underneath. He seemd alert and healthy otherwise, however, and hopefully he'll heal up okay.











Unfortunately, Albert found the second rattler, a juvenile, but did not have any film at the time, and the rest of us were out of earshot, so no pics.







Just thought I'd share a group pic I thouht turned out pretty well. Hope you enjoyed my herping adventure!



-Christian-
-----
pythonelmer.com



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