As I stepped from the shower this morning, I heard a horrified shriek from Melinda in the other room and I knew something was amiss but felt that if I needed to get out immediately, my hosts would have alerted me to the danger, so I decided to take the time to dry off and put on some clothes before going out to see what was going on. The shriek had resulted when Lonnie told Melinda that a small snake was in the yard and she should get her camera but what was in the yard was a four foot Sonoran Gopher Snake (thank you, Google) and neither Melinda nor I consider a four foot snake small.
Melinda grabbed my camera with the 80-400 lens, the better to see the snake from a distance, and took some shots before I came out to find out what all the commotion was about. The Anderson Zoological Gardens seems to have added a Herpetological Gallery at one end of the garden, complete with hole/nest into which the snake disappeared while we oohed and aahed over our photographs. Here are a few of my favorite shots that I took, once I wrestled my camera away from Melinda.
