"You found a what???"

In April, I went with 2 friends to Kansas to herp on a field trip aimed at gathering more knowledge about the target area, herpetologically speaking. The trip was pretty uneventful: We only saw 4 or 5 common species, including prairie lizard, ornate box turtle, and a red-spotted toad.

At least, we thought that was uneventful. We see those species in our Texas panhandle herping all the time, so we didn't keep anything or take pictures. However, after a long day in the sun, we got back to where we started to find a different story. There was a person with tally sheets whose job it was to record what species each group had found as they returned. I ran through what I thought was our paltry list and the guy wrote it down, until I came to red-spotted toad. That species wasn't on the tally sheet. Upon conferring with another organizer, the recorder informed us that our toad find was a county record...at least, it would have been, if we had brought the animal back or taken a good picture.

We lead the second organizer back out to where we had seen the toad as best we could, but as you would imagine, the toad hadn't sat there and waited for our return. He was long gone. The irony of the situation is that we had 3 cameras, 2 GPS units, and bags galore that we could have put the toad in, but we didn't use any of them. We just didn't think it was noteworthy. Lesson learned.

On our way out of Kansas, we poked around some rock piles to see what else we could turn up and, among other things, we found 2 prairie rattlesnakes. The majority of prairie rattlesnakes that I have encountered have been during herp work for a nuclear arms holding facility (i.e. no pictures allowed), so this was my first real opportunity to get a good picture.

So, no county record, but a fun day nonetheless.

Prairie rattlesnake