Snake Baby, Em holding the baby garter snake, which later bit me (see UPDATE
below) when I tried to hold it, photo © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
green metallic me
how old am i in snake years?
children have no fear
***UPDATE*** — I thought it might be fun to show what a lively baby the garter snake was. He or she (how does one tell?) was hard to photograph for all the whipping about.
Em was so brave and nonchalant that I decided to also be a courageous baby snake holder. So Em handed me the snake, she took the camera, and BOOM, that snake really took to me. It latched right on.
Their little mouths can open “sooooo big.” They really are adorable, and even as this one was munching on me, I just loved it.
-related to posts haiku (one-a-day) and WRITING TOPIC – TOADS & FROGS.
How do you get these shots? What a snakey expression! Brave girl!
(seriously what cameras do you guys use?)
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chickenlil, Wondering the same thing! The photography in each of these posts is fantastic, and I keep wondering the same thing.
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middle line fantastic
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That line is quintessential Em. She walks around the house calculating how old she is in dog years, how old Sony is in dog years, how long it will take for Sony to surpass her in dog years. My husband is 350 years old (dog years), our two older dogs are 63, I think, same as Em (dog years).
Then we figured out snakes live longer than dogs by a bit — up to 20-30 years, so we gave them a 4:1 ratio of snake:people years. Which means Em is 36, and the baby snake was probably already 1 even though it was only a few weeks or months old. And good ol’ Baby the Bullsnake is ancient, almost a centenarian.
8)
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The shot is a bit out of focus; the snake was biting at the camera, since I had it so close.
The camera is a Canon Powershot SD750. Costco, $200ish. I do a lot of macro shots. It doesn’t take broad shots so well.
QM has a really nice camera and should chime in about her equipment. I do remember you saying to me once, QM, that it’s not about the camera, though; it’s about the eye.
I’ve taken that advice to heart. I try to be there at the right time and to see. I now carry my camera with me everywhere I go. My family helps me a lot in that they call me when they have something great to show me.
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By the shot you’d never know it was a difficult photo to get; the snake looks like she is posing so patiently.
The fingernail polish job is excellent.
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That baby looks downright full of mischief. Biting at the camera – eek!
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because of the focus and position of the first picture, i thought the snake was inbetween a big toe and the next!
i wonder why it was a relief to me to find that it was, in fact, a hand instead of a foot that held it…
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Hi, thanks for responding to the camera question. I have always said that–it’s the eye not the equipment – but the lens can make a difference in the quality and potential of the photo.
I went all through Turkey with my point and shoot Olympus, and have waited almost 2 years to get a new camera, torn between upgrading to a digital SLR ( having worked with a Pentax K1000 for 30 years) –or a newish inexpensive pocket size, which I prefer for spontaneity and not having to squint through a viewfinder, I am too blind for that.
My son is taking Photoshop so I gave him my old one, just after the Bee Swarm, and got a new Olympus, Costco, $129. – and I am playing with it, learning what it does best. I just posted some recent shots to my blog (http://chickenlil.org) and you are correct, macro is the best attribute, but at least I can carry it in my purse in case of snake attack.
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Scaramastra, I had to go back and really study the photo to get the “big toe” effect, and yes, I can sort of see it, although the toes would have to be kind of perpendicular to one another. But yeahhhh…. 8)
Teri, I love painting my girls’ nails (fingers and toes) just to make cool designs, but this one was an Em job.
Bo, yes indeed. We’re not baby snake whisperers. Had Jim been out there with us, we might have had a calmer snake.
Cooool, lil. I’ll have to check out the shots. I’ll be interested in knowing if you’re happy with it. Hey, Jim just today took out a Nikkon he has, pre-digital, and it really was cool to see it again. Old cameras — lots of fondness for ’em.
My friend Jana was here today taking shots with one of three cameras. She just got her son Dez a Costco camera — or, well, Costco had it advertised for weeks. A Nikkon, but they were never in stock. So she got it online for the same price. We had fun shooting a little mouse who’d made its home in the hollowed branch of an apple tree. You should have heard us screaming. (Me and Jana, not the two kids who were with us.)
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What amazing pictures. I’d love to see a larger version of the one with the snake chewing on your finger. The haiku is splendid too, and wow, a Powershot! I’ve been using a Powershot SD800 for a year now, and totally love it. It’s the first camera I’ve used that has good enough image stabilization to offset my less than rock-solid hands when I use the panel — and a panel bright enough to see on a sunny day. I love the feeling of being more connected with my surroundings that’s missing when my vision is restricted to a tiny viewfinder.
Saturday night I had a conversation with two SLR snobs who couldn’t believe I could be happy with this little thingie, and that I almost never make prints, even after spending eons perfecting things in Photoshop! Too funny.
All this snake talk, especially Ybonesy’s last remark about reminds me of a story about two little girls and a snake. It is the second lifestory I ever wrote. It’s set on a scorchingly hot day in Farmington, NM, and several hundred stories later, it’s still one of my favorites. You can read it at http://snurl.com/2eqcg.
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Great story, ritergal. Your grandmother sounds like a down-to-earth woman. I think a lot of women who grew up in small towns in her day probably weren’t much afraid of snakes.
You know, we have Baby the Bullsnake, which we got when we bought the house. The man who gave us Baby told us that some of the neighbors around here didn’t know the difference between bullsnakes and rattlers. He said that one day a man down the road killed a bullsnake and proudly pointed it out. “You idiot!” the owner of our house (and Baby) told the man.
Bullsnakes are very beneficial. Garters are, too.
Re: the Powershot, I love it. I would some day like to get a better camera, but I’m satisfied in the mean time.
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I’d love to see a larger version of the one with the snake chewing on your finger.
p.s., I wish that photo were more clear. The flash went off and washed out the snake’s lower jaw. I tried to correct it, but even in a bigger format it’s still a bit hard to see.
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ybonesy, these photos are really fun. I love the top snake shot — the green fingernail, and then the background looks just like a watercolor. I can’t believe how snakes are just everywhere around your house!
About cameras, yeah, I’m a pretty firm believer that it’s in the eye of the person shooting (and not necessarily the camera). But some cameras are better than others. Within the same price range and models, the Canons and Nikons (I believe) are pretty comparable. I’ver never had an Olympus but I know people who swear by them.
I don’t have a full-bodied SLR camera. But it’s not a point-and-shoot either. I’ve got a Canon Powershot G6, 7.1 Megapixels. It does take great photographs. It’s hard to focus in the telephoto range, takes good wide angles.
One of the things I don’t like about it is that I like to shoot and compose through the viewfinder (old school), and not on the screen that swings out. And on this Canon, there is parallax error – the shot you compose through the viewfinder is different than what actually shows up on the shot.
Liz has a Canon Powershot, I think it’s in the S series, maybe an S1. Hers is slick. It doesn’t have the parallax error. They might be up to S5 now.
My brother just got a Nikon, I think it’s a full-sized body. And another friend just got a full-sized Canon. I’d like to get another full-sized camera eventually. But I find the mid-sized Canons really take a beating and can go anywhere. I like them!
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That sounds like a good option — mid-sized — when it comes time for me to upgrade. Which I don’t plan to do any time soon, but those really large cameras seem a bit bulky to me.
Hey, QM, I looked in our comments to see what we had written about Snake Medicine, since you are right, there are a lot of snakes around us. I only found this, which you wrote in comments under the post “What Is Your Totem Animal?” (LINK):
Snake is big stuff – transmutation, and those people are rare. Anyone with snake medicine has some powerful stuff going on – the healers and medicine men and women of our time.
I also had a link in that post to snakes as totems, which said:
Snake comes when we are moving toward change and need to let go of a part of our old self. Snake awakens our spiritual intuition allowing us to explore the mysterious depths of our mind and soul. Its unblinking stare looks into our souls and teaches us how to birth untapped power and creative wisdom.
Powerful stuff.
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ybonesy, when I used a full-sized SLR, I carried a lot of bags and equipment around. It does create more bulk. But it’s a different kind of shooting. Large format, quality images, that could even be blown up to poster size with clear effort.
These days, I shoot more on the fly. And there is something to be said for that, too. I’m surprised at the images I get sometimes when I shoot spontaneously. I think both have their place in the HUGE world of photography!
Ah, Snake Medicine. Yeah, I remember, it’s about shedding. I used to have a bull snake skin wrapped around a branch ladder hanging from the ceiling in my apartment. The ladder had been part of my Senior show and was lashed together. I finally let go of it when I moved (I am drawn to ladders as part of my personal symbology).
Anyway, I had a reading during that tiime, about 20 years ago, and the person told me to put the snakeskin in a box for a while. That the energy was too powerful for me at that time. I needed to focus elsewhere. I was surprised that she knew it was there. Since she had never been to my apartment.
Hmmm. Isn’t the process snakes go through to shed their skins amazing?
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Dee found a snake skin this weekend, from a medium-sized snake. We have it out in the potting shed, which is also where Baby lives.
Baby hasn’t shed yet, although she seems to be getting close. She does act differently when she’s about to shed. Active, engaging, moving all around, rubbing on the tree branches and other parts of nature in her area. Her color changes, and her eyes.
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BTW, the baby garter in the photo had a piece of snake skin that was sticking out right behind its head. You can see it in the photo if you look closely. I think it might have just shed since its skin was shiny.
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I haven’t read much about the shedding process with snakes. Do they shed once a year?
Did you know raptors shed all of their feathers over the course of a year and grow all new ones? I used to be amazed at this because I always found so few raptor feathers on the ground in the woods. Only once in a while.
I guess it’s similar to the way humans end up with new skin every 7 years. If only it were that easy to shed psychological baggage. 8)
I’ve never actually seen a snake shed her skin. But once I was hiking in PA and almost stepped on a Copperhead skin across the path — only I thought from a distance that it was the actual snake. It scared me to death.
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Oh, I see the piece of snake skin behind the garter snake’s head now. I missed that the first time. Helps to blow the photo up.
yb, are snakes born live or do they hatch? I can’t remember. How did such a young snake already have to shed its skin?
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Good questions. I had to look them up.
Snakes lay eggs, or most do. I might have told you about Jim finding a whole bunch of baby snakes in a pit, but I don’t believe they were newly hatched. (There were no eggs in the pit.)
Actually, now that I think about it, the snake in the photo might be young but not so young that it was hatched this year. I just don’t know, being as how I’ve never seen what I know for certain to be a newborn snake.
Snakes shed 4-8 times per year. I have noticed that Baby the Bullsnake sheds quite a bit. The shedding seems to be connected to her expanding body. After she eats a big rat, for example, her body expands then contracts. What I read is that baby snakes shed a lot, since they are growing rapidly.
Maybe tonight I’ll have a chance to post some links. I noticed a Youtube video of a snake shedding, for example.
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Wow, 4-8 times a year of shedding. I had no idea. And baby snakes shed more…didn’t know that either. The snake in the photo sure looks like a baby, doesn’t it. A video of a snake shedding sounds fascinating. Maybe you should do a separate post on fun facts about snakes and include the video. Or maybe a future Writing Topic. 8)
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Good ideas. Let’s see if I can catch Baby in the process of shedding one of these times. That would be an excellent Writing Topic.
Yeah, the snake in the photo definitely looks like a baby, especially when you consider that the fingers holding it belong to a nine-year-old girl. 8)
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“…snake comes when we need to let go of a part of our old self.”
From the looks of that picture (and I love your grin!), Snake is the one that needs to let go of a part of your ol’ self!
ow…ow…ow…ow…ow
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yb, love Em’s green nail polish in the photo! She seems so comfortable holding the tiny sanke. The shot of you holding the snake, the smile as it take it tiny jaws to your finger is priceless! You actually appear to be enoying it!
2 years ago we had a black snake shed in a tree right off our deck. Brant just thought that was the coolest thing he ever saw! You are so correct with the haiku in that last line “children have no fear”!
QM, J has an older Milnolta maxxum 2xi with all the bells & whistles (even a tri-pod). Of course we have downsized, but you might want to give it a try when you visit! D
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leslie, leslie, leslie. You should be an ad copywriter or a stand-up comedian. That was a *great* catch!! 8) 8)
diddy, is J’s camera digital? Do you ever use it? I’d love the see the deers in your backyard…hint, hint.
I actually was enjoying that snake. It wanted to be on its way, and there we were, so much bigger than it and temporarily interrupting its travels across the field. I held it too far down its body, unlike Em who knew to hold it at a certain point so it wouldn’t latch on to her. Get bit and learn ; – ).
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yb, no, it is not digital & I am afraid to touch it. We do have a newer digital however,so I feel much more comfortable with it. We have tried taking pictures of the deer in our backyard, but they catch on much too quicly & bolt. However, we have a great photo of a snake at camp & a zebra moth. We bought Brant a childs digital camera & he is much more talented than I am!
p.s.- I was so inspired that I painted my nails & toenails today. A tea rose color. (although I have have been known for choosing orange & even black) 🙂
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diddy, my old manual film equipment is Minolta, too. And I still have the old camera body and lenses. I took a lot of great Kodachromes with that camera. It’s close to my heart. 8)
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My mom absolutely refuses to walk over to the computer so she can see your snake photos. Actually, she refuses to glance in the direction of my monitor. Thanks for providing this evening’s entertainment! 😀
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