Growing Up Snake Hunting
In my youth, I wandered woodlands across the north east in Ohio and West Virginia. I was fascinated with all animal life and spent countless hours watching small creatures in the countryside. Exploring these hills, mountains and woodlands I encountered ratsnakes, copperheads, timber rattlesnakes, box turtles, salamanders and all sorts of small mammals. I moved to Florida with my family in the summer of 1981 and at the age of 11 was transported into a tropical oasis named the Ocala National Forest. Located east of Ocala, this forest held many discoveries for me. Gopher tortoises plowed through vegetation like small tanks. Alligators lined the edges of lakes and rivers, and sliders stacked themselves on top of one another to compete for the sunshine. Paradise found.
Navigating dirt roads on my bicycle, I “discovered” new finds daily. A common green anole was the first exotic looking reptile I discovered. It lived on our screen porch and amazed me with the color changes in undertook. I soon learned to “search” for reptiles around junk, abandoned trailers, tires, any just about anything else a 11 year old boy could find. Discovering snakes beneath the debris was always the best find.
This early discovery of such fascinating reptiles has led me down a path to where I am now. I still have a great passion to seek out these creatures and view them in the wilds. As I grew older my fascination with venomous snakes became stronger. I discovered my first Eastern Diamondback rattlesnake at the age of seventeen, and from there on I was hooked. Armed with a camera, my goal is to photograph these serpents as they lay undisturbed - in situ. To “capture” them forever on film, frozen in time, so as to serve my memory when I become stricken with old age. As I trod through mud and muck, vines and briar, saw grasses and scrub, I am driven by a unwaivering desire to seek out this magnificent beast.
And in the field as I round the edge of a thicket, a burrow, or a windfall, I discover my quarry, my old friend, the Diamondback.
Paul R. Moody II
