Rattlesnake...

...curled up next to a rock. Had it had its normal coloring, it would have been almost invisible, but because it has just molted it is unusually dark. You can see its discarded skin to the right. Although we couldn't see its tail to see if it had a rattle, it has the distinctive triangular shaped head and relatively short, stocky body of a rattlesnake. They are not aggressive and this one might have been pretty cold as it never moved,  so the biggest danger is not seeing them and accidentally stepping on one. Our neighbor's gardener found one curled up in a pot under the hose....

Our last dog, Lucy, stuck her nose into the bushes, as dogs are wont to do, and got bitten on the nose by a rattler. We never saw the snake and originally thought it was a bee sting, but she barely made it home before collapsing. She was lucky...the vet sent someone to the hospital for the antivenin and stayed up all night with her. He told us she 'turned the corner' at 3am. 

He was a great vet...a big tall man with a beard who towered over most people.  I once ran into him in the Berkeley hills where I used to run, and gave him some advice about his sore back. The next time I saw him he thanked me and said it was getting better. "Now I'm running like an 'ancient god' " he said to me.

He hated to fly and usually drove or took the train all the way to Vermont where he spent part of the year raising wolves. He was excited to be asked to be an official vet for the Iditarod dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska. He drove all the way to Anchorage in his beat up Land Rover and was then informed that he would be flown by a bush pilot to his station in some remote outpost. This giant of a man could hardly refuse to go because he was afraid so he did it, and it must have cured him because he served as an Iditarod  vet for many years after that.

He finally retired and moved permanently to Vermont and his wolves, leaving us without a really wonderful vet.