Gopher snake

Sulphur Creek Nature Center is one of the two wildlife hospitals I volunteer at, and I recently asked to pick up additional hours there as a docent in addition to my regular shift in the hospital. My primary goal as a docent was to handle the education raptors, which I have begun doing, but although I didn’t specifically say so, I was also looking forward to handling the snakes. I don’t have an especial love of snakes – I mean, I love snakes, but not like I LOVE raptors – but something about holding snakes just really appeals to me. I’d held friends’ snakes before and it’s just a cool feeling to have them slithering around your arms. This weekend at Sulphur Creek I got to take both a barn owl AND a snake out for walks around the park – talk about a happy Renae. It doesn’t get better than that. 🙂

Anyway, I’m currently typing this a couple of weeks in the past from when you are reading it. It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon and I’m spending a couple of hours picking out photos and scheduling a bunch of posts. Absolutely unplanned, it just so happens that this post is being scheduled for the day before I will be going on my first off-site program as a Sulphur Creek docent and the subject of the program is gopher snakes! How appropriate!

The day Fortinbras left us to drive back down to LA, he asked to hit up one last park before he departed, so I took him to Garin Regional Park, which has trailheads in my neighborhood. I hadn’t been there in a while because I don’t usually see much wildlife there, and we did see a lot more dead wildlife than living that day, but just as we were leaving, Mark informed me I had almost stepped right on a snake! I was mortified that I nearly hurt a snake, so I apologized to him and took several photos.

This is a gopher snake. They are so-called because they like to live in gopher holes. They are constrictors, they are pretty cool, and I’m looking forward to talking to some kids about them “tomorrow”.