Here are some of the different reptiles and amphibians that I have caught,
and all these pictures were taken by me.
This is a baby black rat snake. I found him on a walk down the road. The baby black rat snakes have a different coloring than the grown ups to help them hide.
Here is a yong male fence lizzard.(Rebeckah helped me catch this one.) I have caught a lot of Fence lizzards. I can tell he is a male because of the blue on his belly, females don't have blue. Fence lizzards are very fast so they can protect themselves.
Here is a good example on how to tell male from female, the female has a white underbelly
and the male has black and blue on his underbelly,
and here is the tops of them, the left is the female and the right is the male.
This is a Leopard frog, they are called that because of their spots. I have caught lots of Leopard frogs.
Here is a tree frog he has sticky feet so he can stay on the tree even when upside
down.(I took this picture on mom's bed, so he could have a nice white background. Hee hee!) I've caught lots of Tree frogs. They sound like toads, with a trilling noise.
This is a black rat snake, it's a small one compared to others I've seen. I've caught lots of Black rat snakes. They aren't bad except they do love to get in our chicken coop to try to feast on eggs. Dad once was bitten by an 8ft long blackrat snake. We killed copperheads- it is illegal, but the only ones we have come across have been on the front yard and close around the house when little kids are playing there and the kids startle them. And it's preparing to strike. They can really jump high.
That's jessa behind the tree. The snake is going up to check out a nest with eggs. It's weird to see a slithery scaly tree trunk moving, until you figure out it isn't the bark-(on a bigger tree), it's a snake.
These are mole salamanders. I found them underneath a stone behind the chicken coop. I have also caught some newts but I don't have any pictures of them.
This is a ribbon snake, and I have also caught garter snakes before.(they are the
most common arownd here. sometimes we mow them up and that's sad.)
On a camping trip I found this young female five lined skink under a log. You
can tell the females from the males because the males have red heads in
mating season, but you can also tell by the five lines the males will have all year
round and the females are alll brown.
Here is a female box turtle. It is only one of the 96 that I have caught. You tell the
females from the male by looking at the tail, the females will have a bigger tail for
eggs to come through. And the males have a smaller tail.
This is a red clay toad, we can find them in our garden all the time.
We once had a cat eat a toad and we thought that it had rabies, because the poison from the toad made its' mouth foam, and it got sick, so we kept it in a cage for two weeks,
and of course it wasn't rabid.
Now this isn't a sight you see every day. This is Shea, she is a common snapping turttle, I found her in a small steam that runs in back of our house and I was on a walk with Tali and Beckah. When I caught her I wasn't thinking, I just picked her right out of the water like in the picture below.
I have only caught three other snappers and Shea is the biggest. Of course, they can get much bigger. When I came home with a snapper, Jo was thrilled, and went to work at taking measurements,(even with Jo being a boy- he never picked her up They do have a bone breaking, snapping bite.)
Here are the mesurements-shell 10" long 8" wide and 5" tall. Wight 6 1/2 pounds. Tail 9" long. Front legs 4". long. Back legs 5" long. Claws 1" long. Head 3" long. Neak 4" long. Gape 2" wide. Age 9 years old. You tell that by counting rings on the shell, that layer up as they grow, like trees. And Shea can jump 2'. I'm very glad that I kept this information.
Here at home, I put on some gloves and we took the mesruements. She snapped that stick in half. It's fun to observe them, of course, after keeping them a while, I let them go. Sooner if they won't eat, later if they will. We had a little pet fence I would put around the tiny waterpump pond feature in front of our house, and that's where they would stay. Mostly box and red earred slider turtles.
