Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Just getting around to posting these now. Went out herping on the ‘rez’ again last weekend. This place has some great landscape and a ton of life. I’m hoping to find whip snakes here, but so far no dice.

Wild horses. I’ve never seen these up close before. They are very skittish. We spotted them about a half mile away and got to within about 150 yds before they thundered off over the hills. I know mustangs are technically an introduced species, but they are seriously beautiful.

You can see the large black stallion on the right. He was stamping his feet and snorting, trying to intimidate us as we worked our way closer.

Northern Pacific Rattlers

Side-Blotched Lizard. These guys were fairly common in the sage steppe habitat. Uta usually share their range with whip snakes, and are the reason I’m hoping to find the latter here. I have to thank Nake K. for pointing that out to me.

Does anyone know what this is? It’s kind of similar in appearance to a bushy-tailed woodrat, but larger. Looks nocturnal to me. Its snout-to-vent was probably 8-10”.

Scelops were thick on the ground

Southern Alligator Lizard

is a Bushy-Tailed Woodrat.

I agree with the horses, beautiful animals. Someday I would like to see a herd thundering by. I prefer to think of them as re-introduced though since modern horses evolved in North America but went extinct some 10,000 plus years ago if I recall correctly.

Gerry

Modern Horses evolved in asia. The American Horse species all went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene.

I look at the "wild mustangs of the American West" the same way I look at Burmese Pythons, Feral Pigs, House Sparrows, Rock Pigeons, and the rats behind the dumpster at your favorite restaurant. They simply don't belong here and we shouldn't support them.
-----
Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

I agree, I also feel the same about cats & dogs.
If I can't have non-native retiles then NO NON-Native animals should be allowed as pets.

Should allow 'em as pets but launch real control efforts. Start killing the strays--I don't care what species. Hire people with guns, set traps, whatever. Dogs, cats, hogs, burms...I don't care. They don't belong.
-----
We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion people if you had to be beautiful to get laid.
6.6 African House snakes
3.2 reticulated pythons
.1 corn snake
4.2 Florida Kings
1.2 speckled kings
1.2 ball pythons
0.0.1 Argentine boa

aren't we all non-native....?

Natural migration
On a more serious effort, I want land control and I'd like our government to stop providing incentives to have children.
The biggest problem I have with introduced species is that very few people are consistent; lots of the same folks that want the burms out of the glades would faint in horror if we started a real feral cat or dog eradication program. And vice versa (as posters here have shown). People that have no problems with the thought of eliminating feral hogs or cats or rodents don't like killing the burmese because the burms are their sort of critter.
-----
We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion people if you had to be beautiful to get laid.
6.6 African House snakes
3.2 reticulated pythons
.1 corn snake
4.2 Florida Kings
1.2 speckled kings
1.2 ball pythons
0.0.1 Argentine boa

and resembles something more fitting for the milk snake forum... how about we don't and say we did.

The debate over the American Mustang being native/non-native won't be settled here because the causes for the debate go far beyond the simple point of "is it or isn't it".

Please do me the favor of not having my comment/name being the starting point of some bit of foolishness. I, in turn, will refrain from any personal commentary after trying to be helpful with identifying an "unknown".

Gerry

We got around under our own steam so it does count as natural migration. Good point, which I missed. My bad. I agree that burms are better out of Florida than in, as are monitors and other potentially uncheckable uber predators. We are too late for the rock doves, English Sparrows and Starlings but we may still be able to nip some other newcomers before they really dig in.

A favorite organism of mine to wish not here: Kudzu. I fear we're stuck with that one.

I'd give real money (and possibly a spare kidney) to get rid of fire ants myself, but I fear that's a lost cause
And feral pigs...sheesh talk about destructive (although tasty with the right cooking).
-----
We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion people if you had to be beautiful to get laid.
6.6 African House snakes
3.2 reticulated pythons
.1 corn snake
4.2 Florida Kings
1.2 speckled kings
1.2 ball pythons
0.0.1 Argentine boa

That makes the horses native as well. If our being here is natural migration, and the horses just tagged along, than they're native too. It's like a bird flying to an island and pooping out a seed from the mainland. the plant that grows from that seed is still considered native, whether the bird brought it there or not. I'm not saying this gives us permission to go around introducing all kinds of crazy animals into different environments. I just think we should be more concerned with the impact an animal is having on said environment, rather than how it got there.

I say we get rid of all people decended from europeans.They dont belong here.LOL
-----
"He's down in the basement staring at his snakes " My Wife

--< : < > < > < > < > < >~~~

Doug L

Andy,
I was hoping for another WA post from you soon & this is a great one! I love those rattlesnake! My wife & I are hoping to be able to head over that way to find some of them in the fall, we'll see.

Dan

Thanks Dan. Nice to see you avoided the brawl about to erupt on the other side of this thread over wild horses...

You visiting relatives in the Seattle area again? West of the mountians probably differs the most from your home turf. Shoot me an email if you want some recommendations.

Andy H.:
Bushy-tailed Wood Rat males can exceed one pound in weight.

Myself and fellow falconers sometime hunt the local Dusky-footed Wood Rat as alternate quarry when hunting rabbits. In central and E. Oregon we have sometimes hunted the Bush-tailed Wood Rat but they are harder to flush as they frequent rocky areas.

Richard F. Hoyer

Thanks for the info. What species do you fly?

Female Harris's Hawk.

Richard F. Hoyer (Corvallis, Oregon)

Very cool Andy! Even though those are despicable introduced wild horses you second shot is fantastic.lol.

Nate