Stalking Prey

Now that we have a house with a pond and a fair bit of "wild" land attached to it, not to mention an undeveloped empty lot to one side (i.e. forest) we see more variety in our wildlife. We have a pond full of frogs, and consequently we have a number of garter snakes hunting them. This week we had one large snake sunning itself, with a large bulge that it was presumably digesting. But more svelte and active snakes were still to be found in and near the pond. Who knew gartersnakes swam so much? Not me.

I've been having fun stalking wildlife with the little digital camera. It has a wee telephoto that more or less replicates what you see in real life from the equivalent distance. So my challenge has been in stalking my prey—getting close enough to get closeups. It takes a fair bit of patience. I've got some great pictures of frogs, and yesterday I had a go at getting closeups of a garter snake.

This one had taken fright when I walked by and dove into the pond, but then returned to the edge; I went and got my camera. It took fright again and dived in, but I was moving very slowly, and it doubled back and actually came up through the grass a little toward where I was; it was clearly watching me.

I managed to very slowly get down on my knees and extend the camera toward it, bit by bit. (The camera has a foldout monitor showing what the lens sees, so you don't have to keep your eye to it, which means I do much less grovelling in the dirt than I used to with my old SLR.) The snake craned its neck to see what I was doing.

I advanced the camera slightly. The snake advanced through the grass, very cautiously.

This is the last picture I took—camera and snake were probably about 4 inches apart.

And moments after I took this picture, it lunged and bit my finger.

Didn't hurt, didn't do any harm, didn't break the skin—it just felt like being tapped hard. I yelled, the snake flung itself into the pond, and I fell over laughing.

Now it's possible that it resented not having me get a release before taking its picture. But my herpetologist friend said it may have thought my finger was food, as snakes generally decide that things that don't move aren't alive, and most of me hadn't moved significantly in quite some time. And I guess a finger does look kind of pink and worm-like—at any rate, I fooled a turtle with it on one occasion (a turtle in hunting mode is something to see), and perhaps turtle and snake brains aren't so far different.

So now the question is... who was stalking whom?