Snake Week - Better Than Shark Week

This week started out spectacularly when I got one of the work vehicles stuck in the mud. In my defense, it hadn’t rained in two days, the road looked like it was gravel (yeah, a light smattering of gravel on top of half a foot of mud), and we had *just* taken one of our vehicles in for repairs and were given a temporary, non-4WD replacement. Yeah whatever… I got stuck in the mud. Ironically enough, the night before Michaela told us about how she had to call one of the guys from the refuge to pull her out of the mud the time that she got stuck, and how he reminds her of it every time he sees her. I was NOT going to resort to calling for help, so a good seven minutes or so later I had managed to back my way out. TAKE THAT, MUD! I parked back by where the gate was, which meant that I had a 1.5km walk to get to my closest territory, and a return walk of 2.5km from the farthest. I walked over 12.5km that day, which actually isn’t one of the longest days. That’s the nice thing about my work – it is very easy to adjust the amount of exercise I get. If I’m feeling lazy, I might stand in one spot while waiting to detect a bird in his territory. But if I know that, for instance, a delicious pie is in my immediate future, I can make an effort to walk around during that time instead.

Monday was apparently Memorial Day, but there are no holidays during the field season (if only the birds knew to take the day off then WE might get a break…)! That’s okay, though, because I tried my first wild blackberries that day. There are a bunch of them on one of the properties, and I had seen them before but didn’t know if they were edible or not. Michaela made the mistake of telling me they were, because then I spent a good 10 minutes eating blackberries instead of listening for my birds. They are so yummy!

Tuesday was an exciting day - I found another BCVI nest, my first BCVI fledglings, and my first rattlesnake! The nest was *not* filled with nestlings, unlike the last several that I had found. In fact, it was still being built, but was nearly completed. The fledglings were the first ones that I had found myself, and they were from the first nest that I ever found (how poetic)! I had seen fledglings that were only a few days fledged before, and they are super difficult to find because as soon as the parents start shradding at you to leave their babies alone, the fledglings freeze where they are and don’t make a sound. One of the only things that could help is if they were banded and you happen to glimpse the colored bands. The fledglings that I found were between two and three weeks old, so they were hopping around even when the parents were shradding – made it really easy to find them. I even got re-sights on two of them.

The snake encounter was the first one of Snake Week, and definitely the most terrifying. I was walking to my next territory through tall grass and keeping an eye out for lichen-butt spiders when I heard an airy hissing noise, so I glanced down and saw that I was about to step a foot away from a (quite large) diamond-backed rattlesnake. SO MUCH FOR YOUR RATTLE. As soon as I saw him I just turned and ran in the opposite direction, didn’t even hesitate. Of course, I stopped after a few meters so that I could get my wits, and then I went back to get a picture. I got as close as I dared (3 meters?), and then stuck my arm out until he started recoiling again, got the picture (okay, a couple of them), and then got the heck out of there. The terrifying part was that he was just hiding in a tall grassy area… and the only thing around me for several hundred meters was TALL GRASS. I took baby steps and scanned all around me for the rest of that journey – slowest two hundred meters I’ve ever walked. Then, of course, while trying to avoid grassy areas in my next territory, I stood on a fire ant mound and wound up with ants crawling up my legs. Didn’t really have a choice but to pull my pants down and swat them all off. What a day – I started out ecstatic about finding a nest, and I finished it pants-less and slightly terrified. It happens to the best of us, I’m sure.

My next snake encounter was on Thursday – I thought I heard something moving through the brush that I had just passed by and looked back to see a freakin’ coral snake!! Coral snakes are crazy because they have neurotoxin in their venom which will make you stop breathing. The good thing is that they are very non-aggressive and will usually try and get away. However, there are so few bites in the US every year that it isn’t profitable for drug companies to keep producing antivenom, so if you get bit by a coral snake, you’re dead. Naturally I went after it to get a picture.

Yesterday I saw two snakes – the first was a little one on the path that we mistook for a stick. He was super calm and posed for his photo shoot. The next one (and the last one of Snake Week), very narrowly avoided being run over by our Wrangler as Chelsea and I were heading back from going to a winery and getting Mexican food.

Speaking of the winery – that was a really nice treat to end our week. It was only about 25 minutes from the house, they had several very good wines to taste, and a beautiful porch with a stunning view where we enjoyed our glasses in rocking chairs. That was so incredibly relaxing that it will definitely happen again. We also found some little random Mexican restaurant (sit down and drive thru) where we stopped for dinner. Two enchiladas with refried beans for under $5! Plus free chips and delicious salsa. Definitely gonna be going back there, too.

The horrifying part about yesterday was the chiggers. I woke up twice the night before because I was so itchy (when you go to bed at 10pm and wake up at 11:30pm, you know it’s going to be a long night). So yesterday I made sure to put sulfur on my socks and waistline to avoid getting more bites. That didn’t work at all. By the early afternoon my ankles were already starting to itch, which usually doesn’t happen until I get home and take my socks off (which irritates the bites, I guess). I thought that maybe I had spear grass (long seeds with little hook at the end that stick to clothing, fur, etc.) stuck to my socks. I didn’t have any of that, so I knew it was just my bites that were itching. When I got home and took my socks off I realized, to my horror, that I had at least 50 new bites on my ankles. I could tell they were new because they were puffy and hadn’t yet been scratched open. (To be fair, I think the sulfur may have worked, but because I put it on after I put my boots on, it didn’t really get down to my ankles – just my calves.) I can’t even begin to describe how uncomfortable this is. I have bites on bites. Normally taking a shower helps stop the itching, but after that shower my ankles were just burning. Fortunately Marisa had some kind of gel for bites and itching that also has some kind of numbing agent, so I coated myself with that and it seemed to work for most of the night. May need to look into actual prescriptions for this because this is unreal. I quite enjoy Texas, especially living in the small town area, but the chiggers are bad enough to make me never want to live here permanently.

Other fun pictures:

Not sure about the quality of this video, but these are hundreds of spiders (not sure what species) that live in dark little crevices and crawl all over each other:

Also, sitting at Starbucks at hours on end is wonderful, because every now and then they make a mistake on someone's drink, so they put it on the bar for someone to have for free. I just scored a free grande iced caramel macchiato!