Ok so everyone knows I live in San Antonio and work in South Texas. And everyone also knows Texas is full of snakes. So I thought I’d be counting snakes left and right for the Center for Snake Conservation 2012 Snake Count Week (May 12-20). I had already seen six snakes in the three weeks before. But apparently all the snakes in South Texas had received a memo saying I was looking for them because all I found was toads, lizards, and turtles for most of the week. Then my friend and fellower herper Eric M. came for a visit the last weekend of Snake Count. We decided to spend a day road cruising in San Antonio and South Texas. We ended up seeing six species of snakes, two turtle species, one lizard species, and one frog species. (Guess the snakes like Eric more 
) Unfortuantely most of the snakes we observed were DOR (Dead On Road) but we did manage to save three from getting smashed. We also saw a Texas brown tarantula (probably a male, Aphonopelma hentzi), wood rat aka pack rat (probably southern plains woodrat, Neotoma micropus), and nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus). Another fascinating observation was of a barn owl (Tyto alba) out on the hunt (probably for our snakes). Below is a list of herps we saw that day:
Snakes
- Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox) – 3 DOR, 2 alive
- Great Plains Rat Snake (Pantherophis emoryi) – 2 DOR, 1 alive
- Western Rat Snake (Scotophis obsoletus) – 2 DOR
- Checkered Garter Snake (Thamnophis marcianus marcianus) – 1 DOR
- Texas Patchnose Snake (Salvadora grahamiae lineata) – 2 DOR
- Diamondback Water Snake (Nerodia rhombifer rhombifer) – 1 DOR
Lizards
- Texas Spotted Whiptail (Aspidoscelis gularis gularis) – 2
Turtles
- Red-eared Slider (Trachemys scripta elegans) – 2
- Three-toed Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina triunguis) – 1 DOR
Frogs
- Rio Grande Leopard Frog (Lithobates berlandieri) – 1
