Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I love LA nature. Esecially the herps. Heres a neat story for ya'll.

My friend and i were walking on this trail going back to his truck. All of the sudden this frog came leaping out of the tall grass and weeds on our left about 6 feet in front of us and my first thought was....its a frog...then i was like why is it jumping 3 feet in the air and running so fast. Then came what i like to call the black lightning. About a 3 foot racer went barreling out of the weeds and after this frog. this all happened in about 30 seconds. I dropped my fishing stuff and went to follow the racer and i found it looking for the frog. It never noticed me and came back up toward me. It came within a foot of my shoe....then took off after i moved a bit. It was the coolest experience. My favorite part was the racer chasing the frog. Thanks for reading.

Very cool, what part of the state are you from? LA has 5 different subspecies of racer.

John

oh yeah im in livingston parish. Im pretty sure it was a black.

Cool, I'm in Baton Rouge. This part of the state has blackmask racers and as you head east towards Covington they have black racers, and the "line" seperating the two is around Livingston parish so you are probably right that its a southern black.

John

Yeah ive been seeing alot of racers lately so they are becoming my newest obsession. I'll probably never have one in captivity but i do alot of photography so one of my new targets is racers. Should be fun and challenging.

I saw at least 3 black masked in convent all within a ten foot radius and with in 2 minutes of each other. Then i saw a black in gonzales. My friend walked out of a house we were working at and saw it. I went out and started looking for it around the dumpster and finally saw its tail.
ive made at least five attempts to catch a racer but all have failed because of my paranoia. Also my adreneline is usually pumping pretty fast too.

Same here, I'm dieing to find and photograph some blackmasks. Very few pics of them on the internet, I guess cause of their odd range. Surprisingly I've only found one so far this year and it was in Convent, also. About 4 ft long, in knee-waist high grass. He shot right by me and I saw a flash at my feet and grabbed for it, and all I had was the very tip of his tail so I let go. And of course I lost him in that high grass, he may have shot down a rodent hole or something I dunno.

Great pic of a bp there, excellant photography.

I usually try to take pics of my finds.

We should meet up and go herping for racers lol.

John

yeah that'll be cool. I know of a couple good places actually.

Herping for racers specifically would be our best bet in this heat anyway. What kind of places you got in mind?

John

Yeah and plus theyre the only thing that will come out in mid day.
About 20 minutes from my house is the privately own recreation place. you pay 5 bucks to get in and you can hike all day. Its close to the amite river and theres a big 35 acre lake. Its 111 acres of land access. This is where i saw that racer chasing the frog. also blue bonnet nature center is ok for hunting but not the best. There is a place in baker called black water conservation and also some bike trails in the woods along the river. They both would be great places to check out.

Yeah, seems like some good spots.

John

I hope I can post my Black Masked racer pictures but I don't see a link.
This Black Masked Racer I photographed on the trail at Jean Lafitte State park. I was walking along and this racer came out from underneath the elevated walkway. He went back underneath and then I stomped my feet so he came back out and I followed him down the trail until he stood his ground underneath a palmetto plant. I sat there getting eaten up by mosquitoes taking around 50 shots of this snake while he sat just there. After I took those shots I walked down a little further and there was another in the leaves only ten feet away. In case I can't find a link to show these pictures I just put them on my Website.

http://www.freewebs.com/ruthveni/variouspictures.htm

I've figured it out! Here's a picture of a Black Masked Racer at Jean Lafitte State park.

Ross

My Louisiana Pine Snake Website

Nice pictures. I like your site, I'm a huge ruthveni fan as well. I saw some Theron Mager's ruthveni at the New Orleans show in January, did you buy them?

John

Yes my Theron pair came from the show and Fred bought the other pair. I'm hoping to breed the Vandeventer pair next year. I"ll have to get some new pictures of them on my website soon. They are growing like weeds.

Ross