It had been another 109 degree day in Texas's Big Bend. Not only had the day been hot, but a couple of hours after sundown the heat of the day was still palpable. As it approached 11:00PM, the thermometer was still registering 99 degrees Fahrenheit. But at least at 50 miles per hour we had a breeze on these mountain roads.

On this, our last night in the Big Bend region, we were varying our tactics. We'd drive a while, then check a couple of roadcuts, then drive some more. By midnight the temperature had plummeted - to 97 degrees Fahrenheit. Pocket mice and kangaroo rats skittered and hopped across the roadway. My search for a Texas lyre snake continued, but showed little promise of fulfillment. I worked one side of a roadcut. Jake worked the other. I found a female black widow with egg cases, Jake found a...



Well, I didn't know exactly what Jake found until well after the fact. In a kidding manner, Jake had mentioned finding an iconic gray-banded kingsnake, Lampropeltis alterna, at the end of the cut but I hadn't seen it. Although he continued to kid, I somehow failed to take him seriously - and he still hadn't shown me the snake!

He did flash his light at me a few times, just before I returned empty-handed to the car. I thought he just wanted to be picked up. So that's what I did. I picked him up and we made another run out the road and back. It was still a roasting night and even at 2:30AM the only snakes we saw were a few western diamondbacks and a single juvenile Mohave.

The next day during the long drive home we compared notes and Jake made a comment or two about gray-banded kingsnakes. The comments went right over my head. In only a matter of hours we were unloading Jake at his house and he was grinning all the while like a Cheshire Cat!

At the end he made some comment like, "Whoops. I forgot that bag in back of my seat. Could you get it and check it for me?" I could and did. Gray-banded kingsnake. A big one. A beauty of the gray banded phase. I was the last to know. Hoodwinked! Jake was laughing so hard at my amazement that he could hardly stand.

Our trip had been even better than I had known.

More photos below...