Nude Kentucky Wildlife
June 8th, 2011
I’ve spent the past couple days off in the wilds of Kentucky taking a few photos. It was hot. I had a few encounters of a kind I’ve not had before. It was hot. I went to a lovely waterfall. It was hot. I also shot at a friend’s home in a secluded place in the country. And, did I mention that it was hot?
I was around 9 years old when I started wandering out into the woods to spend the night. I love the woods. I love being outdoors. I’ve hiked around in 47 of the 50 states. I’ve hiked and boated and swum in the Amazon rain forest. I’ve hiked and done rock climbing in the Alps and in many spots in the U.S., including the desert southwest. In all those 50 years of being outdoors I’ve never seen a poisonous snake in the wild. Until yesterday.
Wandering down the trail on the way back to the truck from a waterfall, there he was, right on the trail. Rattle going full speed and his eyes right on me. He was definitely not interested in letting me go on down the trail. And I was definitely not interested in challenging him for the territory. So we did a bit of bushwhacking to give him a nice wide berth. I appreciate his inclination to warn us rather than just attacking. That’s a nice thing about rattlesnakes. That blurry thing sticking straight up on the right is his rattle, warning us to keep our distance.
On that same trail we also saw this creature above. I put my boot in the shot below to give you some sense of scale. That is one big bug! I have no idea what it is and I’ve never seen anything like it before. Maybe one of you readers can identify it? I was thinking centipede, but it seemed to only have six real legs, so that probably isn’t what it is.
But I can assure you that neither of these creatures had a single stitch of clothing on. So I’m counting them as nudes. Of course I shot some nudes that are a little more along the lines of what you are used to seeing here…those will be coming soon.
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