Black Widow vs. Scorpion

Just in case anyone was wondering if a black widow was tougher than a scorpion, this was something interesting that was found earlier this year while snake hunting. This photo shows what happens when a scorpion gets together with a black widow spider. The scorpion becomes just another meal. In this area, it is extremely common to find black widows with abdomens the size of quarters. The first time I found a black widow this large, my heart started pounding and I checked my clothes repeatedly to make sure I didn't have one on me, but now we have become used to finding them and have very little fear of them.

The scorpion is just a lesser arachnid and becomes hollowed-out web discard:

Great Basin Rattle Snake By Request

My cousins were out here the other day. One was telling me of some alligators he caught back home recently, but he also mentioned that he had never seen a live rattle snake. He lives right in the middle of palmetto habitat, so I don't know how that is possible, but I immediately made it my goal to find him a live one. We would have only 45 minutes of searching after the sun went down before he had to be somewhere. The first snake we would find would be a gopher snake that was trying to absorb some heat. My cousins liked the gopher snake. This one didn't hiss or get tough with us and was calmer than some of my pet snakes.

After looking for a while, I started to wonder. Then I took a separate trail and almost immediately found what we were looking for. His first ever live rattle snake was a Great Basin Rattle Snake. The rattle snake was very calm. It never rattled and only held this defensive posture for a few seconds after I kept blocking it's escape.

When the rattle snake was on the ground, it was hard to see it, but it had 2 distinct prey lumps. They were easier to see with the snake suspended over a stick.

Kangaroo rats were most likely what the snake had eaten. We saw quite a few of these guys hopping around. Kangaroo rats never need to drink water their entire lives. They have special kidneys that allow them to survive on only the moisture from things that they eat. I have no idea what purpose the super-long tail serves. Really, the tail encumbers the rat (mouse) and makes them easy to catch.

We saw some of these hairy scorpions in the same area:

Canyon Tree Frog Behavior:

This is a canyon tree frog exactly as we found it on a warm, nearly vertical canyon wall.

The canyon tree frog exactly matches it's surroundings because it is covered in the same sand that is also covering the rock. Is the frog intelligent enough to camouflage itself by rolling around in the sand, or does the frog's natural behavior just provide this perfect sand camouflage without the frog even realizing it?

The canyon tree frog looked much cooler after my neice poured some creek water on it and revealed it's spotted pattern.

We found a lot of red spotted toads in the same area. There were also leopard frogs in the same area, but to get photos of more than just their eyes and noses with horrible reflections, I would have had to damage some habitat.

Toads do not ever have to submerge in water to keep their skin healthy. They have super absorbant skin on their rear-ends that can absorb any little bit of moisture that they sit on.

A couple tiny toads that recently transitioned from water to land:

This is a chorus frog. These are the frogs that are often heard and seldom seen. They are classified as tree frogs, but are usually found at the edge of bodies of water

I have found that chorus frogs are very calm and will eat moving insects right out of your hand. This one is a female:

A light rain brought out hundreds (maybe thousands) of tiger salamanders on this night. The road was turning gray in one area with salamander guts because so many were getting smashed. My son and a friend jumped out to save some, but it was a futile effort because more were coming onto the road than could be removed. Stopping on the road nearly got us hit and also attracted a sheriff's deputy, who questioned us for a while. I explained about the salamanders and the gray salamander guts all over his tires and what that nasty popping noise was as he was unknowingly running over so many salamanders. He took my license, ran our plates, and then told us to get out of the road. I took a few shots before he made us leave:

Another shot of the same group of live ones:

This one was really cool looking:

The large one in this shot is albino:

Seeing hundreds of tiger salamanders smashed in the road like that was horrible.