Howdy everyone! Sorry, but I have to start with a brag. You’ve already read numerous agility accolades on Raven, our middle and smallest Poodle. He also happens to be my dog which may account for some of that boasting. Ruger on the other hand is still dealing with “Puppy Brain” and as I like to say..he’s the cute one (and officially Linda’s dog). Well, guess who became a star over the weekend!?!
Just a quick background, Ruger comes from a performance breeder out of NY, strong, too smart for his age and from day one..QUICK. Those are perfect for the agility ring as long as he’s “listening”. Unfortunately, he is still learning that element and if he manages to get ahead of Linda, the Poodle Finger (Linda’s term) comes out and that dog takes any obstacle his eyes lock onto. Imagine a little kid hopped up on Pixie Stix on Christmas morning. The laughter that causes from the crowd just eggs him on. Well, we found his calling – Fast CAT – basically a 100 yard dash event and this weekend was his first competition. Holy smokes, we had no idea he would take to this so well. We tried a few “fun runs” at performance weekends we were at and he seemed to like it. In his first official 4 runs last weekend, he ran an 11.214 s, 11.017 s, 11.0 s then a draw dropping 10.528 s (or 19.43 mph). I need to get to today’s feature, but I can definitely say our little Ruger is still cute..but now we can confirm FAST. Well done little buddy.
We here at Intrigued do our very best to bring you interesting creatures to enjoy and if we are lucky, maybe an interesting story or minimally some background to add a bit of educational context. To do that, we generally need to know what we are looking at..well, at least when it comes to post time. In the field we shoot every damn thing that moves hehehe.
Hit the jump if you want to learn more about whatever this is!
Luckily we are pretty good at ID’ing our feathered friends and we can usually hold our own with cute Bunnies, a few of the easier Butterflies and most mammals with the exception of those zoo exotics. From there, we can do some research if needed to splice in some interesting behaviors and fun facts. There is at least one glaring exception and that is SNAKES. For one, we have to stealth research because if Linda sees one of those on our computer screens, the rest of the night is shot trying to get her calmed down. Another issue is variability in their coloring and, to the uneducated (like us), there appears to just be three categories of snakes that every snake in the world can be lumped into – solid, banded and striped.
It isn’t long before I’m stuck in a research Rabbit hole – “Got it, it’s a perfect match for this reference shot..wait, hold on, crap, it also looks like that other reference shot, you have got to be kidding me, this website says it can lose its stripes as it gets older, maybe I will look for ‘brown snake with bands’, this is insane, there are hundreds of options that come back, crap I hear Linda coming, quick image search for cute Bunnies”. Eventually I get so frustrated I throw the pictures back on the queue and go find a bird to feature.
This particular series comes to you from an encounter at Chain O’ Lakes State Park in Spring Grove, IL (link here). Ron and I happened to be standing on a dock in Turner Lake (link here) when I noticed an interesting ripple in the water some ways out. As much as I complain about trying to figure out what a particular specimen is called, I do enjoy photographing them …from a distance of course.
This ripple was meandering a bit, but still kept along a vector directly towards us. I brought Ron on target and we began snapping shots – one eye on Mr. Slither and the other on the getaway path as it seemed a little too intentional in its navigation. It wasn’t too long before it was maybe 10 feet or so from where we were standing. The whole time I was thinking how lucky we were Linda decided to stay back at the RV.
Likely sensing our increasing anxiety, it decided to have some fun with us, took an abrupt turn and went under the dock. Ron has learned to keep out of kneecapping distance when we are in the field – we may be brothers, but survival is a basic instinct hehehe. Lucky for Ron, it quickly emerged on the other side clearly unconcerned by our presence. This also gave us a chance to get good views of the back of its head – every little bit helps when it comes to the ID phase.
This is where I take a stab and hope my wonderful readers can help me out. From what I can tell, in Illinois there are 5 venomous snakes of which the Cottonmouth or the Water Moccasin, as we here in the Midwest refer to them as, is the one we are continually warned about by our parents while we were growing up. Whether on purpose or ignorance parents would typically reference ANY Snake in the water as a Moccasin so naturally most of us grow up thinking the same. This has brought a lot of hardship over the many years for the other common inhabitant of our streams, lakes and backwaters, the Common Watersnake.
That much more common species is fairly harmless and NOT venomous. Note, this is a distinction that has zero bearing on Linda’s deathwish on all things that slither. I, on the other hand, should probably apologize to all the Common Watersnakes that I’ve mistaken for their venomous counterparts over the years. To my credit I have tried my best to distinguish them in the field since.
There are two things I have found that helps me decide between “stay” or “flight”. Snake coloring has never been helpful for me, but the facial features seem to provide the best clues. That bad news is that also means you need to be pretty close or carry some decent glass. First clue is the pupil. The venomous Cottonmouths have vertical pupils – grabbed this reference as you can see that in some of the pictures on this site (link here). Watersnakes have roundish pupils – this site has a very good reference shot (link here). The second clue is Cottonmouths are referred to as “pit vipers” and therefore have the heat sensing facial “pits” between their eyes and nostrils. This allows them to detect very small differences in heat given off by prey, thus increasing their striking efficiency. Common Watersnakes do not fit into this category and thus do not possess those features.
If you jump up to the first shot of the snake, you will notice the pupils are roundish and there are no pits. Based on that, my incredible powers of deduction (not) lead me to believe this is a Common Watersnake – the “stay” reaction wins out. Please let me know what you think and/or if there are additional distinguishing marks you can share with us. We are always striving to get more knowledgeable.
Thought I would leave you with a shot of a cute Turtle that we eventually noticed the Snake was heading right for. I don’t even know if they bother with them, but I can say it came rather close, but then continued on without giving the Turtle a second look. Glad to say no Snakes or Turtles were harmed in the creation of this post. On the other hand, Linda is greatly disappointed in the former part.
Take care everyone. Oh, and congrats to Brad’s Wife (Jan) on her successful completion of the Memphis to Peoria run for St. Jude!
Life Intrigued 