On a rainy April night Jake and I were out road-hunting in Columbia County, up in northeastern Florida. It had been a warm day but an afternoon rain cooled both the temperature and the road surfaces.



But what the heck - the alternative was to sit at home and write blogs, so we elected to hit the road for a couple of hours. As might be expected under conditions such as these, the most commonly seen snakes were natricines, garter, ribbon, crayfish, and water snakes.

The garters and waters are variably colored and patterned. The former may be reddish with or without stripes or dark with bluish stripes. And the waters (these are Florida banded waters, Nerodia fasciata pictiventris) are even more variable, usually being black with thin or fat crossbands, cinnamon with only obscure banding, or rarely, like this juvenile, bright orange and reddish.

It had just begun to sprinkle again when this little snake chose to cross and beaded with rain droplets, it shown like a beacon in the headlights.

In my opinion, this was the find of the evening - almost!