Past Field Herping

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36
Location
Memphis, TN
Here are just a few pictures of some herps I've encountered recently
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Found all these babies in the skimmer of my pool! Poor guys were super tired of treading, I think.
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Not sure on the ID of this guy, but maybe an Eastern Box Turtle? Found this guy in my yard an hour or two ago, probably got swept into our yard after a big rainstorm we had today. He was covered in mud and not happy I was picking him up, so I set him down before I could figure him out :(
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Bad picture, screenshot of a video I took, but a gorgeous baby blue tailed skink that ended up inside my house!

Now, Here are some of my childhood herp encounters:
I'd love to hear some of your own childhood field herping stories!
Sadly, these are stories I don't have pictures to.:main_thumbsdown:
But, here are a couple childhood herping adventures.

The Alligator Snapping Turtle
This find was awesome... but kind of terrifying at first for 7 year old me. So, I was swimming in my pool in the dead of summer when I see a darker place in the pool. Most of the time that I spotted these dark spots, they were just mounds of settle leaves, and sometimes, I'd find a baby red eared slider dazed and confused at the bottom of the pool. Almost every week during the summer we'd find one or two baby red eared sliders (too bad in Tennessee it's illegal to own em). But If i did find a baby slider, I'd take him across the street to the lake that I lived near. This time, a very different visitor was there. In fact, there were no leaves after all. Instead, I was met with a, two foot long (shell length that is!) fully grown alligator snapping turtle that was not in the mood. If you need a little mind jogging of what these cool dudes look like http://www.texasturtles.org/Alligator_snapper_op_800x604.jpg , there it is. Needless to say, little me was equal parts afraid and in awe. I swam up as fast I could and told my parents what I had found. We went to Walmart and got a huge net (which took both my parents to haul the guy out of the pool) and put him in a bin and across the street to the lake where he angrily swam away. I kick myself now thinking that I didn't take any pictures!

A Rope? WAIT NO!
This one is rather short, but sweet. My brother and I were burning some sticks from trimming trees, and we were pretending we were native americans performing a ritual. So, while chanting and doing a tribal dance, I danced over to what I believed was a rope just lying in the grass. I leaned down really fast and picked it up by it's end. Well, its "end" happened to be just behind the jaw bone of a baby cottonmouth! I screamed "Snake!" and dropped the poor fellow. My parents came outside and carefully put him in a Tupperware bin and transported him to the lake.

The funniest part of all of this... We live on half an acre!

(I'll edit this as I think of them, but please share your own childhood stories!)
 

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