So, after almost a week of the mother-in-law staying at my place, my angel of a wife looks at me and says "why don't you go critterin?" That is our term for "field herping". I didn't waste a second, I grabbed my gear and RAN!!!
I live in the Kansas City area, and we've had record cool temps (40's at night!!). So I thought I'd go try and find a red milk snake.
So I went to my favorite red milk sight and started flipping rocks, and found a few ringnecks and worm snakes (cool looking snakes BTW).
I then started across an old delapidated spillway and out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed what looked like a collared sized lizard. I was thinking "no way"! I saw a section of it's tail sticking out from under the rock where it was hiding and it looked like a collared tail. As I walked around and looked under....what was staring back at me but a BIG healthy male C.c.collaris! I flipped rocks in this area for 20 years before I moved to PHX for 15 years, and never ONCE saw a collared!
Granted this guy was no Oklahoma specimen, but very nice for Missouri!. I quicky back off and caught a few HUGE grasshoppers and went and sat near the rock. I removed the jumping rear legs of the hoppers and tosed one to my new friend. He violently pounced on that thing and made short work of it. Then instantly raced to the nearest rock and started doing push-ups to try and scare me away. I simply delivered anothery legless hopper, and he repeated the previous pounce and munch technique. This went on for about 30 minutes or 6 hoppers. I know that my captives cound NOT hold that much food!
So I got up and went to find a few more hoppers, and when I returned I couldn't find my new buddy! I was bummed about that, but doubly so because I had forgotten my camera!
So I dropped a hopper in front of the rock where he had been hiding in hopes of coaxing him back out. After about 5 minutes of waiting I put my face right up to the crack to try and see him.....nothing! "Oh well".....I stood back up and found myself almost face to face with the little critter! He had run up onto a much higher rock and was watching my every move.
I froze, and inspected him from about 4 feet away, he bobbed a bit then darted of to a distant ledge and bobbed a little more.
Then I bid him farewell, and went home!
I PROMISE I will return next week, but this time I am bringing my camera!!!
Thanks for reading this "book"
Don
