Rick A
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After nearly two full months of no measusable rainfall, it is finally greening back up here in the land of the endless mountains. Yesterday the family decided to get an afternoon hike in to scout where my daughter and I hunt for turkeys. It's a beautiful trail, actually an abandon logging road, that has a cut to access another small valley with a section of Hicks Run(middle fork). As we broke through the cut, my two daughters turned off to a small slate quarry where my youngest abruptly halted and informed her sis to "stop, and back up slowly". As soon as they were back on our trail my kids both screamed "SNAKE!!!!", and were both white as sheets. I just had to go verify what kind of snake they were afraid of, yup spotted an Eastern Diamondback poking its head out from under a ladge rock. After getting a shot of its head, I walked tothe far side of said rock(aprox 4 ft) and "holy s__t, two fat tails and another head in the process of eating a chipmonk. The feasting fatty pulled back under his rock just as I shot a pic, but check out the pair of tails sticking out from the one I saw first. Last shot is of the first one again, but I was enthralled with the marking on the back of his head. The entire time, my family was yelling at me to "get the hell away from there", hard to do with a 50mm lens and the urge to photo such magnificent creatures. On the furthest tail, we count 10 rattles plus a button, the near tail we couldn't see all the rattles due to his position, but at least eight or nine plus a button. BTW that body is well fed and as big around as the fat part of my arm, and I'm a 200lb+ man, and I ain't skinny.
