Snakes on The Plain: Lake Isabella

After a few days of herp-nerding out in the Mojave Desert, we took refuge in the mountains surrounding Lake Isabella. Refuge, hmm. Now that doesn’t seem like the right word. Let me rephrase- we got blasted by wind and overtaken by earwigs in the mountains surrounding Lake Isabella, but had great success trapping squirrels! Thanks to the great help of Amy Kuritsubo at B.L.M., we got to camp on a hill in the beautiful Keyesville Recreation Area, next to a lot of cow patties. Fortunately, we are accustomed to camping in such situations, and have found the cow patties to be surprisingly useful! See figure below.

Uses for Cow Pies

1) Frizbees
2) Mosquito repellent (light one on fire and watch all those blood-suckers make for the hills!)
3) Cow Pie Adobes (all of our squirrel traps must be camouflaged and shaded to prevent vandalization of traps and/or accidental roasting of captured squirrels. What better way than to blend the trap in with the surrounding pasture!? See figure at the end of the blog for more creative ways to camouflage traps!)
4) Pillows
5) Just kidding about #4.
6) Matt picks them up with snake tongs and lobs them at research assistants.

Water for Biologists

Whether it was our recent trip to the desert, or the current hot, windy weather at Lake Isabella, we quickly realized that four people were going through 8 gallons of water in less than 24 hours multiple days in a row. Though town was not far away, it was just far enough to be tempted to dehydrate rather than drive to get water. That’s where our friend Rick comes in. Rick was a volunteer for the Bureau of Land Management and lived on a small in holding in the recreation area. He heard about our research and jumped at the chance to show us where he has been finding rattlesnakes since he was a kid. Though we found no rattlesnakes on his property, we did receive a very generous offer from Rick: unlimited water. We would visit Rick’s house at least once a day and fill our 3 and 5-gallon water jugs. Rick and his parents were Native American and very proud of their culture. The house was filled with artifacts, crafts, tanned hides, and bones. Each item had a story, but unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to satiate our curiosity.

Though the conditions were hot and dry, we continued to look for snakes that we knew were probably underground conserving water. After all, you can’t find snakes if you don’t look for them. After several hours of snaking around in the heat, Matt found a magnificent rattlesnake coiled next to a shady boulder. Not only was she magnificent because she was the only snake we had found, but she had extraordinary coloration. She was surprisingly large for a female, silvery blue with deep orange saddles on her back.

The picture doesn’t do this beauty justice.

Despite our best efforts, Matt’s snake was the only one we had found, so we headed back to camp. Sunburnt and dehydrated, we were all pretty quiet on the ride home. The silence was broken by Kayla who shouted, “STOP, that squirrel just tail flagg- THERE’S A RATTLESNAKE!!!” The truck was thrown into park and Matt bounded out, tongs in hand, to catch the rattlesnake that Kayla spotted from a moving vehicle. It was truly miraculous, and only thanks to the squirrel, that she spotted that snake, because it was a juvenile, emerging from its freshly shed skin! We collected the shed and hung it proudly from the rearview mirror of our field truck.

The next day, we all woke a little late, having been beaten severely by the howling wind throughout the night. Though no one slept well, the first cup of coffee set in and we opened our eyes to see this view:

Views like this make every morning a little bit sweeter.

We set out to find snakes in the cool, morning weather. Unfortunately, be it the weather, the wind, or the time of year, we didn’t find any more snakes. We walked rock outcrop after rock outcrop, and just as Margaret let out one of her famous sighs, she yelled, “GOT ONE!”. The team ran over in disbelief, and bagged another large, blueish female rattlesnake. Margaret’s snake was the last snake found at Lake Isabella, and a theory arose afterwards. Finding three snakes is easily an hour or two of work for our team. So why did it take us four days to find three snakes at Lake Isabella? Our theory is this: Spring came early in that part of California, bringing baby ground squirrels and emerging rattlesnakes with it. The rattlesnakes fed furiously on the naïve babies, and satisfied with their meals, found a mate, did the deed, and went to take a nice long nap underground. The three snakes we found at Lake Isabella had special reasons for emerging on the surface. The two large females were gravid, and as good snake mamas do, came to the surface to warm their belly and take care of their growing babies. The young male snake decided that his meal made him a little round around the middle so he needed to shed his skin.

Note how vibrant the markings are on this freshly shed snake.

We proudly reached our Ground Squirrel quota at Lake Isabella, but lack quite a few rattlesnakes. Matt believes we were just a few weeks too late to find the required number of snakes above ground, so he plans to return to Lake Isabella earlier next Spring to complete our sampling.