Top to bottom tree frogs, and my first New Mexico rattler...

After I posted some out door 'tree frogs on a vine' close ups (but no complete top to bottom single images since I was going to do them inside),  Deborah Paris commented...

'the natural light makes them look fantastic. Anyway you can photograph the whole thing that way in a natural environment? It would look super!'

So I thought I'd do both!
The 'no distractions' way (might as well take advantage of how dark it gets here at night!), and around a pond.
Good job I got around to it quickly too. The inferno of color from the leaves was gone the very next day after a severe frost, and it even snowed last night.

This pond has bullfrogs in it (too cold to find any now though!)

2 different patinas

So thanks Deborah, great idea and right in the nick of time!

I still have to tidy up the indoor pics I just took (lots of dust on the table surface etc).

A couple of days before halloween I ran into my first rattlesnake since moving to Santa Fe five years ago.
I'd encountered a couple in California out walking about on some hiking trails (I wouldn't call myself a hiker: I start crying, sit on the floor, thrash about while turning purple and refuse to walk any further after about an hour and a half).

This time we were driving home and I saw a snake in the road.
As per usual I pulled over and jumped out, as I've often done before to encourage with my feet what is usually a bullsnake to get out of the road.

This time it was a rattler.
It had some blood on it, wasn't moving, but looked alive in a normal snakey pose (plus it wasn't flat yet!).
I noticed it was a very pale sandy color with very distinct markings, and some black and white bands by its rattle (which was up, but wasn't rattling).

My guess is it was hit once, maybe just dead, maybe nearly dead.
Anyhow, caution being the better part of valor where I'm concerned, I didn't attempt to usher it to safety since I didn't have a broom or anything on me.

A bit later we drove past the same spot where it was a barely noticeable ring of snake jerky on the road, and the next day there was no sign of it at all.

Eager to identify it, I googled some descriptions, home ranges and pics of various New Mexico rattlers and in the process saw some rather gruesome photos of hands that had been bitten.
They looked like rather gory balloon animals or over cooked sausages that had burst on the grill.
Chilling, to say the least!
Anyhow, I reckon it was a Western Diamondback, and it was right at the entrance to the community college which is right near a lot of houses.
So I didn't feel too bad that I couldn't save it!

And if you really want to give yourself a scare, do a google image search for 'rattlesnake bite'!

Click these links to visit my website... SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

Toxic relationships and dangerous liasons...Is YOUR best friend a snake?

There's a 16 foot long snake in our art supply store.
Her name is Delilah, and she's scary big. The store is called Artisan.
Ron, the big cheese of the store, keeps other snakes too.
Like Bala, a ball python who made friends with a mouse that was supposed to be dinner.

Lucky the mouse and Bala took a shine to each other. They'd nuzzle and seemed to actually enjoy each other's company.
Ron was perplexed.
In all his years of snake keeping he'd never seen anything quite like this before.

Was it the two tone color of the mouse, or its sex being different from the others, that kept the snake from seeing it as food?
Ron tried other mice of similar hues, and alternating sexes.

Each time, the snake would eagerly pounce on the new introduction, and leave Lucky alone.
Lucky would apparently seem a little perturbed for a short while, before resuming an affectionate relationship with Bala.

They were really hitting it off together.

Recently a new mouse was put in with Bala, and as usual the snake went into active hunt mode.
At that moment Lucky hopped up to greet the snake and was promptly eaten by mistake.
Realizing the error of its ways, and wanting to remove the bitter taste of regret from its mouth, the python quickly put things right by gobbling up the other mouse for dessert.

I could hardly believe Ron's strange-but-true tale, and please, feel free to suggest the moral of that story!

Dreama Tolle Perry sent me a pic of Sprightly meeting her cat Eddie, although I think Sprightly will fare better than Lucky.

Click HERE to see her blog.
Dreama recently interviewed another tip top painter Carol Marine on her radio blog which you can listen to HERE. I really enjoyed it.



Click these links to visit my website... SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

Contest: Guess the length of the snake and win a bronze turtle!

I said this week's post would be more fun!

I ran into Marcel, a photographer friend out running with his dogs around our local trail the other day.
Well I suppose to be more accurate he ran into me, since I was walking!
He'd recently been round our place to photograph my tree frog (the real one) to use as part of one of his always interesting compositions....

Cutle little critter, eh?

Well, after Marcel ran off in his direction and I walked off in mine, I found this rather handsome beast!
Marcel must have run right past it!

A fine looking specimen of a bull snake, I'm sure you'll agree!

And whoever can guess closest to how long the snake is will win a tiny bronze turtle.
The bigger one, since I'm all out of the smallest one right now!

Not a very spectacular prize, but then again, not a very involved contest! Just take a wild guess and either leave it as a comment on this post or email it to me.

Closing date is my next blog post when I'll announce the winner, whenever that is (most likely the weekend of May 15/16), so if this is still the most recent post, have a go!

I'm adding this after only a day since I've had such a great response already: at this rate it's entirely possible by the close of this contest multiple people could guess it right, in which case I'll assign them numbers and roll a dice to determine the winner.

Only one guess per person though, so don't email every size by the inch between 1 and 100 feet!

I'll take these snake pics with me back to the spot and lay out a string to match its position, then measure it.

Good luck!


Click these links to visit my website... SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

Update on ....of...... Galleries, last I heard is that he's not responding to phone calls and emails from the collection folks who are trying to recover my share of his selling some bronzes of mine. (Edit-issue resolved after 1 yr thanks to Goldman, Evans and Trammell)

Patina King Mike Masse and his angry swarming hordes

Say 'Hello' to Mike Masse.
He's regarded by many as Santa Fe's patina king.
But he's a lot more than that.
Like crazy. About bees that is.

He's got hives full of them, and he's likely to be risking life and limb at any given moment to get his hands on swarms of more bees if they land anywhere he knows about.
In fact he'd stopped off on his way into his studio to nab a bunch that had settled on Rodeo Road just before this pic was taken.That's him in the blue, by the way. We are both seeing who can hold a half dozen bees in our mouths without getting stung for the longest.
You should also know I'm a compulsive liar, and scared silly of bees. I just have a goofy smile, not really a mouth full of bees.

Anyhow, Mike's place is chock full of interesting goodies, like dessicated salamanders hanging on a nail, other dead things, a box full of fossils he's found on his wanderings, skulls, bones, all sorts of sculptures he's made since he's a sculptor too, half finished work by other people he's welding together before patinating, a gazillion tools, and a sandblaster as modeled here by your's truly.Since I always make it my policy to learn from the best, I met him when I paid for his services to learn how to do some patinas after casting my first sculptures. But he's too interesting a fellow to not catch up with from time to time.

Oh, he also put up a box in a tree on Canyon Road to coax a bunch of bees out of it's hollow trunk. The bees were fairly well behaved during a wedding in the back of the gallery, if I'm not mistaken only the best man got stung on the ankle.Oh, an interesting detail I forgot to mention. Mike told me he got a couple of stings after 2 bees got inside his face-protecting netty head dress bee keeper thing, and he's allergic!
He has to take Benadryl for several days straight. Doctor's orders. So maybe crazy was right after all.

Besides that, it's been another snaky week.
Here's my 'pet' bullsnake in the garden on his rounds. He's 3 feet long. He acted very agitated, swinging his head about when the trash truck rumbled past setting off all kinds of scary vibrations.

And when Meridee and I popped into a garden/flower place which is all outdoors and set amidst a semi wild landscape, I rescued a garter snake from the clutches of a cat.
That cat must hate me, last time I stole a lizard she was playing with.
So I let her play with the string on my hat so there'd be no hard feelings.
Well the snake seemed a bit sluggish, but revived as soon as he saw a chance to slip into some water when I dropped him off by a little pond.

Oh, and I'm not really a compulsive liar.
Or am I?

Final bronze elephant and more garden snake action!

Well I've been tooling around town in the hoodrat mobile lately to some satisfyingly bemused expressions.
And I've got the teeny tiny version of 'Senior moment' all finished up.
I posted a previous blog on making the original clay HERE, followed that up with mold making and shooting waxes HERE, and here's the finished piece (which you can see more views of on my Etsy store and website).

But the really exciting news is another snake sighting in the back yard!
This time it wasn't the usual bull snake, it was a COACHWHIP snake.

Meridee called me outside saying my snake was hanging out in some old budlia branches, but when I saw him I recognized he wasn't old faithful.
I've bumped into a few of these before. They often look quite pink. They like to lunch on lizards.

And the one's I've seen can shift like nothing else. One time I was sure I must have run one over that decided to make a mad dash across the road.
It was moving like someone had it on a long string tied to a sprinting greyhound, but a peek in the rear view mirror showed no road kill I'm glad to say.

So I was pretty careful not to get too close at first or else I would have spooked it into speeding off and missed my photo op. I edged closer very slowly...
Look at those beady eyes!
Curiously, a neighbor gravely told me, shortly after we moved in, that coachwhip snakes gang together in long grass and stand on their heads and will whip at your legs with their tails leaving quite serious wounds.

Fortunately I managed to express surprise without delivering any serious wounds to myself through suppressed laughter. I reckon that little gem got into circulation around the era of the 'Little house on the prairie' when some big scaredy cat maybe ran away from a garter snake or something, through some bushes and had to explain his scratches and actions to an inquisitive audience of his peers.

Or if not his peers, perhaps some very young children, who are prone to believe whatever a grown up tells them. I imagine he stumbled scratched, panting and bleeding out into a clearing of tiny yet studiously attentive Sunday school students.

But I digress. My photo op finally made a break for it, and covered a couple of dozen feet in what seemed like less than a second to hide behind a bush.I checked it out from one side of the bush, then the other side, then back again and it wasn't there!
I hunted around, but I couldn't find it anywhere.
Take your eyes off for a second and whoosh.
Gone.
Oh well.
I wonder what will show up next.

Hoodrats, Darth Vader, and the tree snake of death!

Time for the next exciting installment of Sprightly the hood ornament for my car...
Well, in our last thrilling episode I mailed off a wax piece (as seen above) to Miles.

True to form, thrilling installment wise, it changed color and now appears pink!
Actually Miles made a mold of it since he was toying with the idea of doing a nickel plated one, so he'd need to be able to use it more than once. Since it's lost wax casting, if your original is wax, and you cast it, you lose it!
Darth Vader showed up and had to choke Miles into giving up the mouse, using only the power of his mind. As that pesky Darth is apt to do.
Favoring the dark side, Darth proceeded to waterboard poor Sprightly into revealing anything he might know about cheese, with particular reference to its potential uses as a chemical or biological weapon.

Darth is a shadow of his former self, taking on part time mouse torturing jobs between terrorizing whole planets of actual people these days. Seems Wall Street has had an intergalactic reach.
It's the silver sniffer! Now it just needs boxing up and sending to me for its next round of transformations...
Speaking of sniffing, this bird and nest were snapped outside our window a few days ago. Not sure what bird it is, but it was making a racket so I thought I'd see what was up.
And that brings us to the sniffing part.
A bull snake was up the tree having a nose about, making the bird very agitated.
I watch animal planet, so I know that snakes are deaf.
The bird is too busy hunting about for food to be bothered with tv, so it didn't realize it was wasting its energy in vocal protests at the snake.

The snake is kind of a pet of sorts, in so much as it seems to live in our garden (we spot it once or twice a year), and I like snakes.
Anyhow, since we also liked the idea of seeing baby birds growing up I popped outside and tried to get the snake down with a putter, but it shot straight up into the very spindly branches.
Really fast. I was a bit stunned.

The long pole for changing light bulbs too high to reach did the job, directing him down until I could grab him and drop him on the floor, where he slid under a pile of brush.

A day later the bird had left the nest, and after peeking a look inside via a makeup mirror taped to a stick there were no eggs either. So I guess the slithery fiend returned to claim his meal. Easier to catch than mice I suppose.