A few days ago, I saw the tail of a long thin snake twitching outside one of our planters on the decomposed granite (DG). I ran upstairs for my camera (my old digital Kodak Z1012) and was able to get a couple of shots off before the racer quietly slithered off. The snake caught something moments after I got outside to photograph it. The prey looks like another small snake, but it also could have been a lizard. I could see something long and thin hanging from its mouth. However, in the second photograph, I'm unable to see legs on the reptilian form stuck in its mouth. A friend hypothesized that it was another snake, a small collared snake, which in some photos I found online, has the pink to salmon coloration that is visible in the animal being consumed. I did see a very thin coral-colored tail hanging out of the striped racer's mouth after it first struck its prey. I've lived in Southern California all my life, but this is the first striped racer that I've ever seen - and it was in my own backyard!
On June 18, 2014 around 4:30 p.m., my husband and I were on the trail from Tokopah Falls near the Lodgepole campground in Sequoia National Park. There was a small gathering of people watching a black bear with her two cubs feeding in a meadow. As I moved up and down the trail trying to get a good angle to take a photograph of the event, my husband elbowed me and said, "Look! There's a deer!" Indeed, the deer was about six feet away from the trail, but the doe was paying no attention to the viewers. Her attention was fixed on the bears, who were now face down, feeding at the base of a large tree. Moments before the deer's arrival, I had heard some soft cries and thought it was the baby bears crying to their mom….
As you can see in the second photo, the adult deer passed very close to the bears as she circled the tree. At first, she was silent, but after a few circles, she started vocalizing. Clearly, she was in distress. Periodically, she would stop looking off to the left of the scene as if she were waiting for reinforcements. No other deer were to be seen during the 20 minutes that we stayed at the site. The next two videos are of the interaction between the bears and deer. Words are unnecessary to sum up this Life 101 event.
