Herpetofauna - One Life's List

Western Fox Snake
Elaphe vulpina vulpina

Champaign Co., Illinois.  August 16th, 2003
 
  I was canoeing on Homer lake with my buddy Jeff.    Enjoying the day, enjoying the fine weather and the turtles sunning themselves on half-submerged logs.

We're about thirty feet from shore when I spy a snake swimming from the cattails towards the canoe.  Water snake, I thought.  On it came, directly for us.  Wait a minute, that snake is too slender for a Nerodia...it swam right up to me, I put my hand over and plucked a Fox Snake right out of the water.

Now I've been looking for a Fox Snake right here on my home turf for some years, with no success.  A number of DORs, but not a single live Fox Snake.  And, as Mr. Murphy would have it, I brought no camera on the day a vulpina would put itself right in my hands!  I'm never leaving the house without mine again!

 

 
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