Creature Encounter: Eastern Indigo Snake

I've been going through a lot of my older reptile and amphibian photos recently (ranging in age from a couple months to a few years old). I've encountered a lot of really cool animals over the past few years both in my professional and personal life, but I haven't really had much of an opportunity to share those photos or the stories behind them with others. So they just sit there on my computer; in fact, some haven't even made it off the camera yet! But here on steemit, I've attracted a decent number of followers who seem vaguely interested in my scaly adventures (or at least you all are good at pretending!), so I figured I'd start sharing some of my best encounters here, even if they are a little dated. Hopefully you will enjoy these photos as much as I enjoyed taking them!

I'll start off with my adventure looking for the elusive eastern indigo snake (it is featured in my signature banner after all)!

During my final semester at college, I was lucky enough to enroll myself in the herpetology course offered by the university. Even luckier, our professor was able to convince the dean to allow him to take students on a spring trip to Everglades National Park; with even more luck, I was one of the handful of students chosen for the trip! And so began one of the greatest herpetological experiences of my life!

I'm the one in green directly on top of the sign.

I will have to write about the Everglades in a future post (spoiler alert: it was amazing!), because it was actually a stop along the way that made the trip absolutely unforgettable! Our professor was able to coordinate a visit to the Archbold Research Station in Florida, a station surrounded by 5,192 acres of a highly-threatened Florida ecosystem; there researchers conducted studies on a huge number of species, especially the threatened gopher tortoise. But we were there to help hunt down a different, but equally intriguing quarry: the highly elusive indigo snake.

Just a brief bit of background on this species before I continue. The eastern indigo snake is the longest native species of snake in the United States; reaching lengths of up to 9 feet, they even outgrow the impressively long black rat snakes that inhabit the same range. The indigo snake is listed as a federally protected species in Georgia and Florida, and is now locally extinct in the state of Alabama according to DCNR. Despite their fearsome size, indigo snakes are actually quite docile and can be held with relative safety even in the wild (though their federal protection status makes that an unwise choice).

Aaaaanyway, we teamed up with a local herpetologist at the station who was conducting a study involving seven local indigo snakes. The objective was simple: just find the snakes, record their length, weight and location. The snakes were even previously tagged so they could be tracked using telemetry equipment capable of locating them with incredible precision! Easy as pie, right?

Not in the slightest. For nearly 6 hours we trudged all across that desert-like landscape looking for those dang indigo snakes, and even being able to pin-point their position was of no help to us. Time and again, we would track the snakes right up to the origin of the ping...and find a hole in the ground. The snake would be there, just below our feet, but we had no way to see or get to them. So close but so unbelievably far! Our adversary in this instance was the gopher tortoise; this reptile is an avid burrower that digs huge tunnels (up to 9 feet deep and 50 feet long) all over the landscape and these tunnels act as shelters for hundreds of animal species. Every time we located an indigo snake is was burrowed deep in a gopher tortoise tunnel.

We did consider ourselves incredibly lucky to find a tortoise (they are threatened as well and spend most of their time underground), but we kept up the search for our elusive target!

By mid-afternoon we had tracked 6 of the 7 tagged snakes back to tortoise burrows (we even arrived at one to see just an inch of tail disappearing into the dark!); we were just about out of time, energy and patience. At the insistence of our guide, we continued on; he optimistically told us he believed that the 7th and final snake would be our success, but I still believe he was trying to convince himself more than the class. Another half-hour of trudging through brambles and cacti, and several students seemed to be at their breaking point...until there was a shout from the front of the group. Our professor lifted up an impressively large, jet-black snake for everyone to see and the group just cheered (mostly that the long hunt was over!). The snake, affectionately named Marge by the researchers, was a sight to behold, an absolutely beautiful animal. Being a relatively calm snake (even for an indigo) we were each given the opportunity to hold the amazing animal, an experience I highly doubt I would have ever had otherwise.

To date, this is probably one of the best finds I have been a part of. Witnessing such a rare animal in its natural element is such an amazing experience; it's so difficult to describe what we were feeling. That one find set the mood for the entire trip; we hadn't even reached our destination and we had found one of the rarest snakes in the United States. I don't think anyone said a word once we were back on the road; even our professor said he "needed time to process everything" after finding both a rare indigo snake and gopher tortoise in a single afternoon!

If you made it to the end of my story, I hope you enjoyed it! I will recount more of my trip through the Everglades as well as some of my other big animal adventures, but this hands down takes the cake for one of the best experiences (for now). I am so thankful to my professor and university for being able to put such an amazing trip together, and offer such an incredible experience to the students! 

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