Off shoot of 4-mile Creek in Oxford, Ohio
It's about 3:45 in the afternoon, 65 or so degrees out with a lot of cloud cover and a little sun here and there, but very little wind. My boyfriend and I are our looking for herps at a tributary of 4-mile creek near Miami's campus and close to the Natrual Areas trailhead parking lot off 73. The creek banks are pretty steep with a good amount of fallen branches and some grass and mud. As we're scrambling towards the water I notice a snake sitting very still in some fallen branches. After some struggle and almost loosing her in the mud, I pull her out and identify her by her solid white lips and olive green color as a Queen snake (Regina septemvitatta), much to my joy! Queen snakes prefer to be near water due to their main diet fo creyfish. They can be around 2-3 ft in length, this one was probably about 1 1/2. They are not very aggressive, she didn't try to bite me, but do use a foul musk to deter preditors, which I experienced first hand (yuck!). After a camera phone picture I set her on the bank and she sped away.
Not far down from that same location we were walking along the creek when I noticed a frog just sitting in the rocks at the bottom of about 6 inches of water (water was about 40 degrees). As I scooped it up with my net I thought it might be dead, and I could tell from the dorsolateral ridge, green coloring, and larger typmanum that it was a Green frog (Rana clamitans). After holding it in my hand for a bit and getting a picture, he started to warm up and move around, and eventually jumped out of my hands and hopped away.
*Note: these pictures are to show what the species look like, and I will upload actual photos taken once I figure out how to get them off the camera phone.
Victoria Ferraro
ZOO 409-Herpetology
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