Favoritos de trixpix

Earlier that night, I had fed a stray cat on our porch. When I went to retrieve the paper plate, I met this opossum, finishing the remains. It backed into a corner, holding a chair pad to hide behind, & hissed a bit. I took this quick pic, then backed away. It headed out into the shrubs. My battery was low on my phone, so I wasn't able to get any more photos.

It came out from under a mound of pine straw that I had raked last week. Approximately 30 inches long. Once I stood up after taking these photos, it very quickly moved away to a wilder section of our yard.

This curious, tiny spider lives under a lamp post by our back door. While I was changing the bulb, it jumped down onto a bucket on the table under the lamp where I was working, and crawled onto my hand, looking at me the whole time. I came close to bringing this clever one inside and calling it a pet.

In situ. This is the best photo I have of a proud, protective mother "Hyde County Red" Pigmy Rattlesnake and her 10 - 15 day-old young. I regularly encountered this female while searching for reptiles in an area locally called "Buzzard's Roost" (nowhere near the actual place, incidentally) about 10 miles from my home in Fairfield. The site was on private land - a seasonally-filled, 2 acre duck impoundment surrounded on 3 sides by Bald Cypress wetland, and adjacent to Lake Matta-mosquito (local joke!) NWR. This particular location had an incredibly abundant population of S. miliarius - on one day with perfect weather conditions here, I observed 14 individuals of this species of all growth stages in less than two hours! I grew especially "attached" to the female pictured, as she was reliably found in the vicinity of her "favorite" stump, and I enjoyed witnessing her feeding, frequently basking, and entertaining the attentions of a large (for this species) male in mid-Spring - involving courtship and "mate-guarding" behaviors. I was deeply saddened to revisit this site 4 years after this photo was taken, to find the entire area had been completely devastated by clear-cutting for the pulp lumber industry, right up to the Refuge boundary line - and without a Pigmy to be found, despite an intensive search on my part at a perfect time of year. Apparently, the NCFWS designation of "Special Concern" wasn't actually a "concern" at all. Clear-cutting of sensitive habitat, and roadkill mortality are the most serious issues facing the herpetofauna of North Carolina, back then, through today - and most likely into its future, as well.