{"id":41668,"date":"2026-05-16T21:55:53","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T01:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=41668"},"modified":"2026-05-16T21:55:53","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T01:55:53","slug":"how-can-i-be-a-slackass-in-may","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/05\/how-can-i-be-a-slackass-in-may\/","title":{"rendered":"How can I be a slackass in May?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the past two weeks, the desire and motivation to post simply hasn’t been there, nor have I even been getting many pics, which is weird, because this is the best season to be pursuing such things. Not only that, but I blew off World Migratory Bird Day (last Saturday) and Endangered Species Day (yesterday.) Part of this is, I’ve been a little under the weather, part is, I’ve been tackling them other projects (there’s always something,) but mostly, I think, I just haven’t felt like it. Hopefully this will change soon. I have, for instance, far more video clips than I know what to do with, and have been debating about tackling them in a different manner.<\/p>\n

Anyway, a quick post to show that I’m still alive (for the time being,) even when The Girlfriend took most of the photos for it. Yesterday I was out in the yard and collected some old roofing material that was sitting around, cleaning up a little and having a potential use for it anyway. I was well aware of the fact that it might serve as an ideal hiding spot, so when the snake hurtled out from under it, I wasn’t at all startled, even when it cut some tight circles around my feet in panic mode – I’m guessing I woke it up abruptly. As is my wont, I gathered it up and took it over to show The Girlfriend, though from a decent distance since she doesn’t share my feelings about snakes, especially not ones this large.<\/p>\n

\"eastern
This (the one on the left) is an eastern racer (Coluber constrictor<\/em>,) of which there are eleven subspecies – this could be a northern or southern variant, since I can’t find a decent guide on how to tell them apart. It’s quite a decent-sized specimen, and I initially mistook it for an eastern rat snake even though I shouldn’t have;<\/strong> despite the close similarities in appearance between the two, their behavior tends to be radically different, as we’ll soon see. But first, some closer-ups.<\/p>\n

\"eastern
While I have struggled to capture images of snakes with their tongues extended, it’s often quite tricky because it happens faster than you might imagine and not regularly. Except for this one, who was annoyed enough that it practically did not stop. Overall length was estimated over 1.5 meters – I didn’t attempt an accurate measurement.<\/p>\n

\"underside
This shows one of the more distinctive ways to tell the species apart from the black phase of the eastern rat snake, since racers usually have almost entirely indigo bellies, the white limited to just under the chin, while rat snakes usually have mottled or even patterned undersides. However, rat snakes also have keeled scales on the sides and back, a little ridge running longitudinally down the middle of each, while racers are smooth as you see here. But there are two other traits that can let you know right away what you’re dealing with. The first is, racers are fast (duh!<\/em>), often hurtling away at high speed as soon as they perceive danger, no lollygagging about it. And the other is, unlike the rat snakes, racers don’t hesitate to bite, often enthusiastically.<\/p>\n

\"authors
Actually, it was impressive how much it bled, but this makes it look much worse than it was. Snake’s teeth (save for the pit vipers, in this country at least) are tiny little things no more than a couple millimeters in length, but they are<\/em> sharp, and this specimen was giving it everything – the stinging had ceased within about ten seconds, but the blood ran for a minute or so. Once cleaned, however, you could see the actual extent of the injury.<\/p>\n

\"cleaned
Psshhhfff<\/em>. I’ve done worse walking through raspberry bushes.<\/p>\n

The snake also provided a few nice demonstrations of a typical warning, which is vibrating the tail madly. Rattlesnakes, of course, have a handy noisemaker to make this more effective, but many species do this, counting on the buzzing in the grass or, for preference, some nice dry leaves to provide the noise. I didn’t have the proper camera in hand and didn’t get the smutphone out in time to snag video of this, but it was a vigorous display, twice – once as I was releasing it back where I found it. It dropped into the grass and semi-coiled, giving me every indication that it was still ready to fight, before abruptly realizing that nothing was actually preventing it from leaving and it shot off into the undergrowth.<\/p>\n

It’s been about thirty hours or so, and I haven’t changed color nor had anything drop off, so I think we can consider this harmless. And no, I’d been feeling under the weather well before<\/em> this all occurred, so zip it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past two weeks, the desire and motivation to post simply hasn’t been there, nor have I even been getting many pics, which is weird, because this is the best season to be pursuing such things. Not only that, but I blew off World Migratory Bird Day (last Saturday) and Endangered Species Day (yesterday.) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[4402,7243,5602,8691,8693,8692],"class_list":["post-41668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","tag-coluber-constrictor","tag-defensive-behavior","tag-eastern-racer","tag-i-call-the-big-one-bitey","tag-knock-first-next-time","tag-snakebite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41668"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41677,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41668\/revisions\/41677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}