Sanctified

Hiking today I learned that Fairfax, California (north of the Golden Gate) is home to some slippery friends: rattlesnakes. Climbing up over Cascade Falls I came face to face with this young fella. The yellow bands indicate that he's a juvenile. Young one or not, he was huge and absolutely unmoved by me.

Snakes have a strange power; walking back I jumped at the slightest movement of every single blade of grass. It makes perfect sense why serpents hold such an important place in folklore.

The experience reminded me of this piece of footage I'd seen back in the late '90s. Snake handling at a Jolo, West Virginia Pentecostal Church. - Looking for a little faith? Try Mark 16 set to rockabilly accompanied by some downright fancy footwork.



Keep in mind this footage is relatively contemporary.

Bubo Virginianus

Yesterday, Tennessee Valley, dusk: great horned owl. Awesome.

Lions & Bobcats & Lynx

Oh my!
We've been hiking the Tennessee Valley at night in the hope of catching sight of the elusive bobcat that we were lucky enough to spy last year. The crypto black leopard sightings got me thinking that, hey, not everyone knows the difference. Here are a few photos to differentiate. The photograph of the Canadian lynx is a flickr image by David Cartier.

The bobcat picture is actually from Tennessee Valley.











The mountain lions are from the November 7th Daily Interlake, the local newspaper in Kalispell, MT. Apparently there is a bit of a familiar stand-off between the mountain lions and the ranchers (hungry lions eat ponies, the occasional small dog, goats) and so the long arm of the law, aka the 30-30 Winchester, has been at work.

Cryptozoology: Bay Area Black Panther

As of late hikers around these parts claim to be seeing a black mountain lion wandering around hills and trails. So reports Berkeley resident, L.S.:

"I was curious about EBMUD's protected watershed off Redwood Road in Castro Valley, so I obtained a permit and checked it out . . . I decided to navigate into the gully, walked maybe 30 or 40 feet to the east and suddenly found myself locked eyes with this big black cat. It was roughly 50 feet from me, through several barriers of logs and overgrowth. The first thought is that it looked like a panther, but the weird thing is that sort of animal should be in Africa, not the East Bay. It was so out of place."

What to make of that? This is why I love cryptozoology, because of the relationship to urban legends where the formulation thereof can so easily be tied to other things going on in the world that are freaking people out. Ever see the Legend of Boggy Creek? Check it out and keep in mind the locale and historical relationship to the civil rights movement.

The skinny from our friends at Cryptomundo is that the black bobcat tale is persistent, particularly in the south. They also provide us with the black lynx crypto quote of the day:
"If you see a big black critter in the woods, it’s probably a Labrador retriever - or maybe a wild hog."

*The photograph is of a black jaguarundi, found in Mexico, Central and South America.