A long sought after lifer...

I have been actively herping for over a year now and I have always wanted to find a blacktail rattlesnake. They are such beautiful snakes and I just wanted to see one. I even took a trip to the Gila wilderness where I was pretty much guaranteed a blacktail by Bill. I have looked in several areas and always came up short. Last Tuesday, Bill called me and told me he was giving me some gps coordinates. I said okay and he told me of a blacktail that was hanging out at those coordinates! It was like geocaching! It was great! That afternoon I made the climb to the rock where this snake hung out. About half way up, I saw a nice Chihuahuan Spotted Whiptail and thought I would take a picture of it and discovered just about the worst possible thing: the battery on my camera was dead. I couldn't believe it. Luckily I did have my cel phone and it does have a camera. I continued up the trail and saw some dirt that didn't look right and looked closer and discovered a cute little gopher snake:




Sorry for the crappy pic, cel phone pics are awful.


I got closer and the hike got more strenuous. The gps said I was there. I looked around for the area Bill had described and there it was. It was hiding under the rock in some grass and my cel phone was way below par. This was the best pic I could get:




You can barely pick out some of the pattern. Of course I had to get back to get better pictures. This was possible as the snake was opaque and Bill had found it at the same spot last year in the same condition and it stuck around until it shed last year.


Nikki and I went on Thursday and we found a collared lizard on the way up:




We fought through the bugs and the heat and made it to the rock. No snake. It was such a downer. I couldn't believe it. I was just about to give up because the bugs were flying into any opening they could find, when I decided to look into the crevice from ground level. I looked in and saw this:




There it was! Nikki was excited as was I. We had found it! We have now found all rattlesnakes in our home county! It was such an amazing feeling and then we returned down the mountain and were very satisfied!


Josh