VIRGINIAN-PILOT (Norfolk, Virginia) 25 August 08 In all the wrong places (Diane Tennant)
Chesapeake: Love was not in the air. It was, instead, curled up in the fallen brown leaves of the forest floor on the Navy's Northwest station, where rattlesnake No. 578 was wooing rattlesnake No. 242.
August is the month of love for canebrake rattlers. She was in the mood. So was he, and to prove it he had slithered perhaps a mile from his usual territory to snuggle up with her.
Both snakes carry transmitters. Without them, they would be hard to find. Canebrake rattlers are beautifully camouflaged and they don't move around much, perhaps only to catch and eat the one squirrel they consume per year.
The chirp of the transmitter led a biologist last week to within 5 feet of the happy couple. They didn't move. Didn't rattle. Didn't care. Canebrakes usually don't.
But a third snake was harder to find. The transmitter chirped, the biologist followed through woods, back again, through more woods, backtrack, across forest roads, past fallen trees, backtrack again. He finally found her, curled up, her nose on a mouse trail that led through the leaves, just waiting.
Why was it so hard to find her then? Because, of course, the biologist was looking for love in all the wrong places.
In all the wrong places

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