A Bradley Family Adventure: aka: The Snake Hunt

Meet our new little friend (no name yet). We went with our friends the Billings family to find this little guy. They are experts at finding fun little friends just like Derek. We went to the Shoreline Ridge hiking trail right up  across the street from Hogle Zoo. It was absolutely beautiful and we had a fun time hiking. I forgot to bring my camera with us on the trail, but I got a couple little photos on my cellphone. We caught about 4 preying mantis' that were all different colors. We found 2 brown, 1 yellow, and one green. Kael LOVED playing with them. He would put them on a stick and carry the stick around with him. We let the mantis' go along the way. We also saw a lot of grasshoppers, termites, moths, etc. Kael loves to explore new things and so does Eden. Eden was in a backpack on my back and every time we found a new critter she would try to stand up and lean as far over as she could to see them. The first snake we tried to catch was awesome. It was a blue racer and it was fast! Derek thought it was a lizard at first, but them Derek and our friend Scott were running around like maniacs trying to catch it. Scott got really close to pinning it with a stick and then it basically leaped like 10 feet and climbed a tree, then a while later we found some old rotten logs and turned them over. That is where we found our new little friend plus another little friend for the Billing's. They are both baby Bull Snakes. Our tiny baby can get up to 6 to 8 ft long. The bull snake is one of the biggest north American snakes. After we found our friends we saw an even bigger log and decided to try to turn that one over. So, Derek and Scott got down and had to really shove the thing. We found this huge shedded snake skin. We got all excited and then all of a sudden woosh we all saw something shoot towards the trees. I didn't get a good look, but Derek and Scott were off chasing a snake again. This new snake was another Blue Racer. Scott has always wanted to try to catch one because they are so fast. Derek ran through thorns and bushes and they were close, but they lost it. It was so fast! It was really exciting and the kids loved seeing the adults go crazy. They just kicked back and played with the preying mantis' while us adults were running through bushes. It was really quite the adventure. Anyway, I think our next adventure is to look for horny toads. I love going hiking with a purpose. The kids had so much fun and got worn out and us adults had fun. I think next time Derek will be wearing pants instead of shorts. :) On to the pictures.

Derek holding the snake showing it to Eden.

Showing Kael.

Eden feeling the snake.

  She loved it.

Here are my camera phone pictures.

 Scott Billings and Derek

Kael on the trail.

One of the big log the boys turned over.

Scott is holding the snake skin we found. That was only one piece of the skin. Brittain has the 2 smaller snakes in the bucket.

We had some of Scott's kids with us, Carsen, Brittain, and Kaylie. All the kids were troopers and seemed to have a blast. I was pretty impressed with Kael and Eden. Kael mostly needed a hug now and then and fell a couple times, but he's a tough kid and just loved finding the bugs and snakes.