Snakes are not everyones (anyones?) favorite critters. But they are really cool when you get to see the details!

All snakes have forked tongues which is important and let snakes smell in three dimensions and are used to navigate and to identify prey or preditors.

In this case, this Garter snake would only stick out its tongue when I was moving, which made getting it in focus really tough! It took about 15 minutes to maneuver around to its front and with some semi-funny dancing by me, I finally got some good shots of the tongue. When I got back to the car, Neva wanted to know why I was dancing for the snake!!