A Tale of Two Tails

As I walked towards the Butterfly House on my way to my office, I noticed a small group of young children looking down at the ground and laughing, there must be something interesting over there. I approached. Lying on ground in the center of a circle of four or five squatting children, was a small U-shaped object. The object moved, wiggled. It was the tail of a skink. A few feet away was the skink itself, the lower third ofRead more

Is that a Moccasin?

I’ve said this before, snakes have been putting on a show in the Wetlands. The one pictured at right sat out in the open for quite a while at the foot of the boardwalk near the main Black Bear Overlook while many Museum guests got great looks at it. Understandably, upon first viewing this snake many folks thought it a Copperhead, or Cottonmouth (Water Moccasin). It’s neither. It’s a Northern Water Snake. The pattern on water snakes can vary considerablyRead more