Snakes and Fish

SNAKES!!!

The other day, the foot doc told me I could do without the boot as long as my foot isn't hurting.  Good news-- the tendon and nerves no longer hurt and I am boot free!  Yay!!!  This is such good news for a number of reasons, but today in particular, the capacity to run if needed was important to me.  For it seemed like a snake greeted me every time I turned around!

I started the day off with a morning hike at Geist Park.  I'm walking along, and all of the sudden, I notice a snaky looking branch.

Oh, I can handle a cute little ole garter snake.

It's the duck chasing, big ones that get to me!  I tried to photograph the snake in water, but it's hard to make out.  Not sure what kind it is, but I'm guessing a blue racer, by the way it looked and acted.

Up north, I'd sometimes see A snake.  Down here, snakes are all over the place and lately I've been seeing several!

They leave their snake suits laying around.

I found several garter snakes sunning themselves on branches of shrubs.  This one was particularly long for a garter and I only got half of him in the pic:

While on this 30 minute hike around the park, I also spotted two water snakes!

Both water snakes were in the swampy tall grass.

Five snakes spotted in 30 minutes!!  Sheesh!  That kind of snakyness makes a girl jump when a plane comes flying by overhead.  :-)

 

Oh, despite the snakes I did get some fishing in, but was rather flustered.

 I kept looking around, waiting for another snake to say, "Hello!".

 

Jean and I have a snake quota when we wade fish.  It all started because whenever we would first enter the creek, any creek, we would see a snake!

So, in order to keep focused and keep it together, we came up with a 3 snake limit.  In other words,  we keep at it and don't freak out until we come across 3 snakes.  When we reach our snake limit than we run!

Despite exceeding the snake limit, I did manage to reel in several nice sized gills.  So many, that I decided to bring a dozen home for a fish supper.