The following post is adapted from a June 24, 2006 email:

We’ve seen lots of fauna. The other day we went to a small Mexican town along the border, “Guerrero,” for an evening picnic. The town is old and beautiful. A bit outside the town lies the well-preserved ruins of an old Franciscan mission, San Bernardo, built with large stone blocks. Much of the ceiling is still intact and there are several rooms. It is a very quiet place. It dates to the late 1600s and is a national historic park.
About three years ago, a wealthy family decided to have a wedding inside the tall, open courtyard of the ruins (We weren’t invited and don’t know the family). They made several modifications. They paid for a new “old” stone floor and mounted a new “old” cross on the back wall. They also installed some lighting and mounting cross-wires to hang decorations. I liked the mission much better when it was just stone blocks with a dusty floor. It’s still very nice. Outside, a small lizard darted up a tree, stopping to glance at us where the trunk branched, and then disappearing. We also spooked a tall-eared jack rabbit in some nearby brush.

The town has two pools that are fed by a natural spring. The water drains continually through a stonework stream. Alongside the pools is a natural
bottom pool among limestone boulders cut by an adjoining stream from the same spring. Jacobo and I were walking along this pool when we saw a large black snake eating another medium sized snake in the water. The smaller snake, now dead, seemed to be trapped under a rock on the bank and the larger snake tried for over an hour to pull it out and eat it. While submerged, the larger snake would inch its mouth over the smaller snake’s body until it reached the rock, and then tug, let out some bubbles and then retreat. I looked up both snakes in Jacobo’s Audobon’s Guide to N. American Reptiles and Amphibians. The larger snake, though mostly black, had very faint light chain markings. I think it was a common or desert kingsnake (scroll down), both within the range. It could have very likely been a Texas indigo snake, also in the range, though it is an endangered species. See also here. It commonly preys on other snakes. The smaller snake was striped lengthwise like a garter snake but with different coloration–light brown and orange stripes separated by white stripes. There were no snakes
that really matched it well, but I think it was a Texas patch-nose snake, or maybe a Big Bend patch work snake. I was surprised that the large black snake had not been caught and killed already. We could have grabbed it easily because it was so preoccupied eating. We tried not to call attention to the snake because there were many other people enjoying the park nearby. The park and pool were small, adjacent to the town, and with many visitors daily. If the pool were the snake’s territory, it had survived a long time among many people. The indigo snake has a very large territory apparently (229 hectacres).

Jacobo says: “Jacobo, he got his finger cut. He went in the pool with his finger cut. And then it was bleeding. So I wrapped it up in a towel and then
after that we saw we saw the black snake pulling the little snake and then the little snake was trapped in a big large rock and then finally the black snake, the black kingsnake pulled it out [but did it?] Yeah, it pulled it out and then after that we argued about to go to the horse field. And I was feeling two horses and then I went to a pond and I suprised my mom and my dad and then we were going back to the car. And then we saw a purple fruit (a fig) and we break it in half and then I broke mine in half for my dad and then we went to the car. The end.”

On the way home, we almost hit a small tortoise crossing the highway in the twighlight. I swerved, stopped and then turned around. Jacobo says: “We were driving in the highway to driving home. And then mommy, my mom, said very fast ‘there was a turtle’ so my dad turned very fast and went past it and then we went, we turned back. And my dad picked it up from the highway and then I carried it. Then we saw like two hooks, very awesome, then after that we put it over the fence in a little hole. And then we went back in the car. I was counting by twos and then I was sleeping for one minute. And we got home. I think so.”

We looked up the tortoise in the field guide. The tortoise was about 6 inches long with a domed shell. It was mostly brown, but the
upper “scutes”(shell scales) had yellow “hexagons”, says Jacobo, in the middle, and all the rest of them were “brown hexagons.” The tortoise
retreated into its shell but the shell didn’t close like a box turtle. Instead, the shell was fixed with a two-pronged “hook” on the front bottom
shell, about 1-2 inches long. Jacobo says it could dig with the hook. I think the V-shape might allow the turtle to put its head and neck downward, with the neck fitting in the V. I read in one of Jacobo’s reptile books that the tortoises on the Galapogas Islands have different shaped shells depending on the trees on the island. If the trees are taller, the upper front shell is curved upwards to allow the turtle to extend the head and neck upwards to reach the leaves. In any case, the name of the tortoise was a Berlandier’s (gopher) tortoise, or Texas Tortoise, native to a small region in southeasterly Texas and northern Mexico, and popular as shortlived pets (“millions collected according to the guide”). We have seen several crossing roads in our travels here. It is a distinct species from the common gopher tortoise native to Florida and the southeastern U.S.

Every night one can see the small geckos crawling on the walls and underhangs outside, looking for insects around the outside lights. The adults are about 2-4″, with a salmon, almost translucent white and gray-spotted body, with a black and white banded tail tip. I used to enjoy watching the geckos until I looked them up in the field guide. They are native to the Mediterranean, hence the moniker “Mediterraen Gecko.” They have traveled the world in ships and packing containers–maybe eggs in produce, I think it said, and are now abundant in every region in the world that shares a similar latittude and climate as the Mediterrean. In fact, I told our Australian friends about the geckos, as we often joke about invasive species, and the same lizards are abundant there too– “Chi-chi’s” they call them because of the sound they make.

Next I want to take up birdwatching here. I need a good N. American bird guide. There are several unfamiliar species, many of which are in migration. The grackal, a cardinal-sized blackbird, is by far the most common bird. Sometimes I see caracara’s, I think, perched along the highways. The caracara is a bird of prey with black, white, and orange plumage. They eat carrion and I always see them in pairs. Roadrunners are also a nice surprise along the roads, gliding lowly into a sprint or just darting around.