Snakes!

Fresh pictures from my hike with Joe up Coyote Wall. The pictures are a bit blurry, so let me explain.... The first picture has a few oak leaves, and a LOT of poison oak leaves. But that's not the problem-if you look carefully in the middle of this low resolution picture, you can see an angry, coiled, and rattling snake. If you really can tell the age of a snake from the number of rattles, he was 8 rattles old. Old and wise enough to stay off the trail and warn us with a few rattles so that there was no trouble.

Snake #2 was younger, with only 4 rattles on his tail. This one I almost stepped on, because he was in the middle of the trail and didn't rattle. But no worries, he saw me coming and took off as my foot was coming down, hid in a chipmunk hole, and kept quiet. Being that close, I'm glad he chose flight over fight!