Trail Encounters of a Different Kind

As most of you know, when I go out hiking, I like to encounter wildlife, especially the legless variety.  A couple of days ago, I had a different kind of encounter on the trail. Usually, when I'm hiking, if I hear a rustle in the bushes on either side of the trail, I can be fairly assured that it's a lizard of some kind. Lizards like to hold still until the last possible second, then take off when the danger becomes overwhelming to them. At that point, they aren't very stealthy and make a lot of noise as they travel over dead leaves and such. Snakes, on the other hand, are very stealthy and can travel over dead leaves without make a sound.

So when I heard something in the brush off to my left, I looked over and sure enough I spotted a lizard running across the trail on a trajectory that would take it right between my legs. About a millisecond later, a second sound and right behind it comes a snake in hot pursuit. So now I have a lizard and a snake heading right toward me.

Now, I can hear some of my friends right now exclaiming, "I would have been screaming." Yeah, well, I'm not proud to say that an expletive left my lips and I jumped just a little, mainly because I had been surprised by the snake coming out more than anything else, but once the snake saw me, it decided that lunch, in the form of that lizard, wasn't worth the human that now stood between it and its meal and so it turned tail and headed back to where it came.

I was not able to get a photo of it unfortunately, but I was able to ID as a two striped garter snake, very similar to the photo here.  They are very pretty snakes. I just wish the encounter had been a little bit longer as it was over in a matter of 10 seconds or so.