First Rattlesnake of the Year

First Rattlesnake of the Year, originally uploaded by Corbie.

I spent Sunday supervising the Weekend Work Crew inmates. We'd only been there an hour when one of them discovered a baby Rattlesnake on the steps leading to the dining hall. This is an unusual find for February, but the last few days have been warm. The Rattlesnake, however, was quite cold, so it was easy to push it onto the only thing I had with me - my clipboard. I walked around with the snake on my clipboard for about ten minutes before finding little cage to put it in. During that whole time, it barely flicked a tongue at me.

At the first opportunity, I relocated it to the meadow.

One of the work crew guys was overenthusiastic in cleaning the nook (staff/program storage area) and I actually had to rescue a lot of items from the trash and either put them back or recycle them. I explained to him that since one the main focuses of our program is conservation, we reuse or recycle just about everything, and because of this, tend to be packrats. He apologized. It makes me wonder how many other times good stuff has been thrown out. After all, I only supervise the work crew once every few months. Who knows what else has been thrown out?

Apparently our treasure is the work crew's trash.