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A Day in the St Francois Mountains

Yesterday Ryan Thies and I herped a mountain in Wayne Co. in hopes of a Western Pigmy Rattlesnake; we didn’t get the pigmy but we did find some other good stuff.

The habitat we were herping was typical St. Francois Mountain glades

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This Flat-headed Snake was the first snake of the day.

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Where the name comes from

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We looked quite a while before we found the next snake, a juvenile speck.

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This being our second trip to these glades and still having not found any milks we were starting to get concerned; then I flipped a random small rock and uncovered this.

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A few rocks later we found another

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At the top of the mountain I found this juvenile racer under a rock.

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As I was shooting the juvenile, Ryan found an adult out on the crawl.

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And as I was shooting the adult Ryan shouts out that he has found a Great Plains Rat Snake and a Red Milk Snake under the same rock. This was only my second Great Plains Rat in Missouri.

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On the way back down the mountain we flipped the last snake of the day; this pretty and very full milk.

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