An inquisitive old fart with a camera
At the end of our driveway I found this little guy heading into the road, and encouraged him to keep moving. Lots of traffic with a mini-market next door, and unfortunately a lot of ignorant Uruguayans will kill any snake por las dudas (just in case). making no effort to determine if it’s a threat.
Best I can guess is it’s an immature Culebra de Peñarol.
No footprints. So what was it? How did it move?
I doubt they were there at the same time.
This critter appeared today, crossing our sometimes-very-busy street. When I stomped my foot behind him to encourage him to move, he instead raised his head like a cobra. But then he resumed his way across the street and into the ditch. I stood guard in case yet another delivery truck came along for the mini-market next door.
It’s called Culebra de Peñarol, because that futbol team’s colors are black and yellow.
Its scientific name is Liophis poecilogyrus sublineatus. It grows to about 70 cm in length, and this one was about that. It lives in every departamento in Uruguay, and is not endangered in any way, though this individual was for a couple of minutes.
Is it poisonous? you ask. I don´t know. Maybe we should eat one to find out? Oh, you mean venemous? It is not listed as one of the four dangerous species of snakes in Uruguay. However, I did run across an account of someone who got bitten by one.
You can read about the incident here if you care.
TL;DR: you probably don’t want to get bitten by one.
A dead comedreja (possum) in an area on the side of the house fenced against dog entrance, except that Bandido the Shi Tzuh gets in through an opening I left for the cat (now long gone). The compost bins are on the other side of the fence, so what this one was doing here is a mystery, as is, once again, how it died. I don’t think the little dog would have done it in.
…when you find a large dead seal on the beach?
Bark at it. Because of course.
When you come out in the morning and realize that *something* has been wandering around on your glass table.
Another dead turtle (link to 10 April), which I only saw because I went a block east en route to the beach because I intersected with someone going my usual route with two apparently-not-friendly dogs on leashes. This one about 1.5 m long.
It has been a while since I’ve seen interesting dead things on the beach. Yesterday’s was a good-sized sea turtle.
A young boy came over and started explaining something, but I could not make head or tail of what he was saying. Rioplatense Spanish can be pretty brutal, even more so when spoken by kids.
A first!
We have never before seen a tortoise on the dog walk. You think that, if there were tortoises around, the dogs would have encountered them. But they acted absolutely mystified by this thing that wasn’t moving, but they knew by smell was alive.
We gave them a few minutes to be curious, then left the tortoise in peace.