I found a nice hiking trail very close to the bay.  At times the trail brushed up against the edges of the salt marsh.  A few live oaks and pines were present but cabbage palm was the predominant tree, with palmettos growing underneath.  Palm hammock or gulf hammock habitat, I suppose you could call it.  Looked like a perfect place for a Pigmy Rattler, I thought to myself; but then again, not having ever seen one in the wild, what did I know?  Still, I thought this might be good habitat, and I had one of those rare feelings that something good was going to happen.  I kept my eyes to the trail, and lifted fallen fronds of palm and palmetto as I went, scaring up a few Ground Skinks and sending them scurrying...

It was a rather drab and dull looking snake, stretched out on the trail in front of me, but it was my first Pigmy Rattler.  I love that very briefest of moments, that fraction of a second when the pattern is matched, when recognition floats to the surface.  "Oh, that's a rattlesnake!"

This serpent was of a nice size for a little ground rattler, 16-18 inches perhaps.  It cocked its head up at me as I got closer, and as I took photos and moved around the snake jerked its head around to face me.  I got a kick out of these sharp movements, since I had seen Massasaugas, their northern cousins, do the same sort of jerky repositioning.

I spent some time photographing the little rattler, and had to gently restrain the snake with my hook.  Other than lifting palm fronds, this is what the hook is really for, to gently coax the snake to hang around a little while longer, and to perhaps assume a more photogenic position.  I carry a set of plastic plant saucers of various sizes, and placing one over a herp for a while works very well to calm the animal down, and give the photographer a chance to change position, lenses, film, and so on.

Done with my photos, I watched the snake crawl slowly away into a palmetto thicket.  Heavy clouds were rolling in and rain seemed imminent, and as sunset was approaching I decided to call it quits and head back to base.   Rain or shine, the day had ended on a high note.