One of my favorite places to go is a walking path through a prairie that surrounds our gym. It’s a new path having just opened last year, but I love it.

This morning I started by walking to the path head near our house and headed down one of the longer routes. Pretty early on, I came across this (sorry the photo is so blurry)…

I think it’s a coyote but I’m not very well versed in species identification. I kept walking toward it and it just looked at me, danced around a bit, and then sauntered off to the left of the picture and out into the prairie. 

I try to vary my route a little each time just to change things up. One of the things I’ve done most recently is to cut up a grass trail that goes by a pond and dock that I like to stop on for a breather.

I jumped off the paved path where the grass path begins and I saw this…

It’s a snake corpse. Again, I cannot identify the species but it was missing large chunks of flesh and you could see the cartilaginous spine in many parts. Stretched out, it would’ve been about three-and-half feet long. 

It was at that moment that I jumped off the grass trail opting instead for the pseudo-safety of concrete. They say where there’s one snake, there are others. I’d rather not prove that theory correct personally.