Category Archives: Reptiles

Turtle 2024-05-10

What kind of turtle is this? It’s about 5 inches long, so presumably quite young.

[Lively small turtle]
Lively small turtle

The triple ridges with radiating patterns look to me like an Alligator snapping turtle, Macroclemys temminckii. I don’t see anything else among the 29 turtles of Georgia that is even close.

I don’t know what it was doing out in the open, 500 feet from the nearest water, which is our cypress swamp.

Anyway, it provided yet another opportunity to remind our dogs: no turtles!

-jsq

Snake in the bricks 2024-04-02

When I moved this piece of steel roofing so I could park the truck there, a thin black snake looked at me startled.

Then it ran towards the bricks, then into the leaves.

[Snake in the bricks and in the leaves]
Snake in the bricks and in the leaves

I think it’s a southern black racer (Coluber constrictor priapus). Am I right? Continue reading →

Nellie discovers a gopher 2021-03-10

I figured she must have discovered a nest of venomous serpents. Nope, Nervous Nellie was barking up a storm over a gopher tortoise.

[Gopher, Nellie, Honeybun, Yellow Dog]
Gopher, Nellie, Honeybun, Yellow Dog

That threatened species Gopherus polyphemus was actually somewhat threatened, since Nellie was trying to gnaw on her shell. Continue reading →

Snake chose poorly, say dogs 2019-05-18

Update 2019-05-20: A more likely identification.

Definitely not a rattlesnake. Whatever it is, it chose poorly by showing up right in front of the dogs’ doghouse.

Don’t know which dog dislikes them most, maybe Yellow Dog. Continue reading →