Habitat of the Chihuahuan Lyre Snake in West Texas
That Trimorphodon vilkinsonii are out there, there is no doubt—no doubt at all. There is also not the least bit of doubt that I can’t find them. Others find them, sometimes mere minutes before I arrive or after I have left. I know this for a fact for sometimes I’ve been allowed to photo the found snake.

I began looking for this elusive nocturnal snake on Texas trips in the ‘50s with my friend and mentor, Gordy (E. Gordon) Johnston. We drove (actually Gordy drove and I rode) back and forth, and failed to find them. Subsequently I have failed to find them on many of the same roads, right up until today, some 55 years later. If not anything else, at least I am consistent—except for one time. That one time about 15 years ago, Kenny and I were driving through the Chinati Mountain ghost town of Shafter, Texas. In the middle of the town (population once about 4,000, now about 11) we found a DOR lyre snake. The DOR snake was rather fresh and I wondered where the car that had killed it had come from, where it was going, and if the killing of the snake had been deliberate or accidental. It just seemed impossible that with that little traffic the paths of car and snake should have crossed.

Since then I have looked with reasonable regularity during all kinds of weather at all hours of darkness, and never again glimpsed one. Hugh tells me they’re fairly common. Ron tells me they’re very rare. I know only that I have driven and walked the rockcuts in their known TX range for more than half a century and have not only failed to find them, but failed dismally. Time to switch to birding.