First Buzztail this year

I was a bit of a reptile geek as a kid. Growing up on the west coast I came across and sometimes caught all kinds of snakes, southern Pacific’s, pigmy rattlers, Mohave greens, garters, gophers, king’s, rosy boas. I was no expert but read lots of books and could identify them in the field.

Fast forward to a few weeks back, I was reading my 5 and 7 y/o a bedtime story with a snake in it when my 5 y/o said snakes were scary. A teachable moment came to mind and I’ve been hell bent on capturing a garter, gopher or hog nose specimen to show them.

Fast forward to 2 days ago leaving the breaks on our camping trip, looking in the road ahead I recognized (thought) a long slender snake, thinking garter or gopher I immediately bailed out the door thinking I was Steve Irwin gonna catch him by the tail. Luckily as I crossed the 5’ mark my brain kicked in and the identify before capture got the better of me. I’ve run in to prairie rattlers in Montana, this was a baby, just a button, never shook his tail, never moved. Just left him alone but close call.

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I had no idea my wife could jump so high while out hiking in the Missouri Breaks.

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My dad isn’t the most outdoorsy guy in the world. A few years back we were hunting the breaks together and I told him to be on the lookout for rattlesnakes. A couple days into the hunt he taps me on the shoulder and says “dude, you stepped right over a rattlesnake.” I asked him when and he proceeded to backtrack and show me a tiny rattlesnake laying in the trail. I asked him if he went around it and he responded “nope, it didn’t bother you so I just stepped over it like you did.” We had a good conversation about how poor of an idea that was. 🤦‍♂️
 
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