That’s a California striped racer, Masticophus lateralis lateralis. I saw one an hour or so ago hiking in Runyon Canyon, which is just up the hill from the apartment. The one I saw was gorgeous, charcoal with pale yellow racing stripe, in great form at the very end of a shed, and a bit more than three feet long. It was gliding and entwining itself through the brush along the uphill side of the fireroad, waiting rather impatiently for a moment in which the human and canine foot traffic ebbed.
Why? To get to the other side. Come on, people. We’ve gone over this already.
Admittedly part of the snake’s problem as I stood there at what was clearly an insufficiently respectful distance, I nonetheless spent a little time gawking hungrily. It was just so goddamned beautiful with its sleek form, its innocent demeanor. I stood staring stupidly, the not quite as snakelike spandex-clad hardbodies giving me the hairy eyeball as they passed, or running past clodlike and unaware.
It’s a common phemonenon in Runyon, and for that matter everywhere else. People don’t see. Earlier this week I watched ravens mobbing a red-tailed hawk, and the hawk had someone in its talons — a ground squirrel, probably — whose legs hung limp and defeated. It was all happening right there in front of us, a passion play a thousand feet above the Hollywood Bowl, and yet no one else seemed to think it more worth watching than the enspandiced asses of various passersby. A forty-inch snake having a moment of panic significantly less than forty inches from your running shoes and you don’t see it?
Maybe that’s just as well, seeing what can happen when the pretty people of Los Angeles do notice a perfectly harmless snake. I’m not one to hold people’s unreasoning and uncontrollable fears against them. I have phobias of my own, after all. But I will say that my decades-long appreciation of Salma Hayek notwithstanding, if she acted that way in the vicinity of my acquaintance in Runyon Canyon I would almost certainly tell her to get the hell away from me and stop scaring the snake.
You’re absolutely correct! Most people are not observant in wild settings. While one would think it would be instinctual, it appears to be a learned behavior. Of course, that means humans actually have to be in the wild and exposed to wild things to take notice of them. Given there is little profit in this, our children are being trained to be observant of electronic media. Where will they all be when the electricity goes off?
Just saying!
By the way, I really liked the photo of the racer, did you take it?
Bill:www.wildramlbings.com
My wife and I started seeing more wildlife these days now that we started looking more. A few days back we saw a snake cross our path. It’s a path we have walked on for more than a year now. Never had we seen a snake before. I keep wondering how many times in the past we just never looked or noticed.
“enspandiced asses”—nice!
Does this snake swim at all? A similar snake swam right up to us once when we were sitting on the bank of a creek in the Laguna Mountains. It poked its head out of the water right in front of Ben, who jumped up with a shout. Then the snake tore off downstream. I thought maybe it was a two-striped garter snake, which I have heard lives near creeks in the Lagunas, but it looked a lot like this one.
My husband and I greatly increased our ability to see what’s out there through a wildlife tracking course given as part of the wildlife monitoring program of the Sky Island Alliance. The interesting thing is that the skill appears to transfer to less natural surroundings, including a dark street or parking lot in the city.
Beautiful photo, by the way. Thanks.
Quite right, Chris. It amazes me how little is seen by most. The strange looks I get lying on the ground snapping photos of insects or staring up into the trees waiting for that elusive bird to make an appearance. A wasp attacking a walking stick, a snake sunning by the side of the road, a turtle digging a nest next to the jogging trail. It all goes unseen, and somehow I become strange because I stop and notice. Unfortunate.
If that was a joke, it was pretty funny.
If not, not.