Snakes, turtles, and flood waters OH MY!

October 1st-3rd, 2010
Location: Greenville, NC

Finally, after an entire week, I arrived in Greenville, North Carolina. Greenville is home to ECU, where my good friend Adam just started graduate school. It was good to arrive in a solid place for a couple days, even if Greenville wasn't anything to brag about.
The weekend consisted of many normal things, bars, Football, and friends.

Yes I thought it was a joke when he said it months ago, but Adam does infact cook shirtless. His girlfriend wasn't even here yet. I think he just wanted to show off to me, and cook me tacos.On Saturday, Adam decided to go with me to Alligator River NWR. I really wanted to go to Alligator NWR for the Red Wolves recovery project going on there. The Red Wolves forced near extinction in the late 1970's when the Endangered Species Act was in it's infancy. These wolves roamed most of the South Eastern portion of America including Central Texas, Kentucky, and even Pennsylvania. With the Red Wolves literally facing extinction by the end of the year, all Red Wolves were rounded up from the remaining population in East Texas, and with only 14 wolves total, a breeding program was started. The final iteration of this breeding program exists at Alligator River, maintaining 100 Red Wolves across extreme east North Carolina.

The First thing we found was a little painted turtle, who just wanted to go back to the water. No matter how many times we tried to get him to sit still, he'd go running back.
And right after, we found this Black Rat snake sunning himself on the road. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe he's kinking himself up to help warm up faster.

He was quite a cutie, but wasn't very fond of us bothering him.
Not sure what for, but it was hunting season at the Refuge and many angry hunters sped past us as we tried to look for birds and snakes. I must have forgot that jerks rule the world. Jerks with guns. And big trucks.

Here's my first try at scoping using my binoculars and iphone together. It does work, but can be difficult to keep steady.
Double-crested Cormorant juvenile. Expert fisherman, these birds evolutionary downside is a lack of proper waterproofing and must sit and sun dry their feathers before flying again.

Adam found me this gem, an adorable Slimy Salamander
And that leads me to the cute picture of the day

In the week prior to my arrival, North Carolina received an insurmountable amount of rain, and this became painfully apparent as we adventured today (more on this later). Many of the walk ways , especially along abody of water, were flooded, forcing us to walk through calf deep water.

Yes, that is a path, not a river
But when we found Boardwalks, the walk was nice and pretty with the water coming right up to the boardwalks, creating new wetlands everywhere.
A few lillipads, you can see how beautiful of a day it was

Another exciting find on the road, a little Cottonmouth. This being one of the few poisonous snakes Adams ever seen in the wild, because he's extremely unlucky.
He was very cute and very tolerant of us bothering him for about 15 minutes. Which we did alot
Adam even felt confident enough with his timid behavior to pick him up with a stick.
One of my favorite photos of the day, A deceiving shot, of Adam not paying attention while a Cottonmouth, that could send him to the hospital, hangs seemingly inches from his hand. Ok, fine from the previous photo you can see its not inches. Still funny.

And the final photo from the day, a beautiful shot from the lake as the late afternoon settled in.
here's the link to the fullsize photo

And at about 5 oclock we started back, using Adams GPS to get us back home just like it did to help us get there. However, on the way back, it decided to take us on unfamiliar back roads. Back roads that were flooded due to the rain. Not just one road, but every road going west for 10 miles north/south. This was the same time my Iphone ran out of battery, forcing us to find our way back using the dumb GPS. After lots of cussing and being lost in back woods North Carolina we made it back home, 1 hour longer than it took us to get there. The second time I was lost, within 3 days, what luck.