Reptiles at Risk

Returning to Val Marie

Posted by Jeff Hathaway on July 28, 2008 at 6:40 PM

Sunday, July 27th,

We returned to Val Marie, Saskatchewan on the 25th for one more show in the area. This show was not at the Grasslands Park office, the location of our last show, it was instead at the local theater for the Community Movie Night. We were the opening act, so after the show we hung around to watch Kung Fu Panda.
Val Marie was new to one member of our crew, James, who flew into Regina that morning. We also sadly said goodbye to Sean who flew back to Orillia about the same time. Having James on the road has definitely been a big change in the trailer, as dynamics and responsibilities shift between us.
The 26th developed into a day that I will likely never forget. We woke up early that morning to be picked up by our Val Marie snake researcher, Jessica, who we went out in the field with on our first visit to Val Marie. She again took us out to one of her sites where we hiked into the prairie hills and found two large female Prairie Rattlesnakes basking halfway out of their den (or former Gopher hole). They rattled a lot and were certainly not as exited to see us as we were to spot them. Despite all the rattling we saw no teeth and no striking, just a lot of noise. But that was not all that we saw, five other rattlers were out and in view to satisfy our curiosity. We also saw three Plains Garter snakes, one of which sprayed some smelly musk on mine and James' hands (whew, smelly!).
The rest of our day was spent relaxing and seeing Val Marie, which has more character than one would think, especially considering its size. Jessica was again nice enough to be our guide through the town.
The only difficult thing about a good day is getting back to work for the day that follows it. We are on our way to our next show still in Saskatchewan. We have our two final shows for Saskatchewan today and we are off to Alberta tomorrow. So I am taking my final glances at the beautiful prairies while I still can. In fact the prairies where anything but boring and definitely not as flat as their reputation frequently suggests. Oh, and I got a great tan!
That's all for now...
Lenny