There was that rather cloudy long ago morning in Portal, AZ when I was hoping to photo black-tailed rattlers, Crotalus molossus. I had looked and looked but had found none. Then, as I was about to give up an elegant trogon (then known as the coppery-tailed trogon) flew right over my head and alit on a nearby oak limb. I immediately decided a trogon in the viewfinder was a whole lot better than a non-existent rattlesnake. So off I went, my interest now focused on the rather uncommon bird.

Luckily I had managed to get just about near enough to take the bird's pic. There. Click. Got at least one pic. Deciding to try and get just one step closer, I stepped between two boulders, and BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

Not good. Being wedged between two huge boulders was not an enviable position and when I looked down and saw the snake--a big angrily defensive black-tail, I realized how close I was to getting bitten. Have you ever heard of levitation. I levitated backwards over one of the boulders and somehow managed to avoid both a broken shoulder and what had seemed to be an inevitable envenomation.

But, a few minutes later (I never did get that closer trogon photo), still shaking, I did go back and photograph the snake. No sense in wasting a perfectly good photo-op!