welcome break from the roaring heat that had been there only an hour ago. Tom began to gather his gear. He wore a thick pair of gloves. She had insisted he wore them, not liking the idea of him handling snakes without some sort of hand protection. “I know you like to impress your students by handling those things, but maybe consider also teaching them that safety isn’t just for the lab,” she had said, shoving the gloves into his hands. Tom’s breath had caught in his throat as he stared at the desert that would soon be coming to life with the critters that he aimed to catch. The heat of the day was too much even for the cold-blooded creatures. His feet crunched on earth. Cracks reached through the ground like tentacles, searching for water where there was none. A car made its way down the lonely two-lane road; it wouldn’t stop here. Nobody camped here in the summer, the heat was too much to brave. Tom slipped between piles of sandy rocks. Javelina footprints stamped the sandy ground. His eyes scanned the rocks searching for the critters that he hoped would begin showing up soon. He saw a quick movement underneath the overhang of a boulder that jutted out of the ground. Eyes clinging to that movement, he crouched down peeking underneath the rock. He saw the tail first, the light brown of the rattler first, poking out of the coil the snake had twisted itself into. The snake lifted its head at him, and it was then that Tom noticed the deep dark color of the rattlesnake. It was a black rattlesnake, the first one Tom had ever seen, not in a lab and alive. The instincts that would usually prompt Tom to begin trying to catch the snake did not kick in. Instead, he sat crouched staring unblinkingly at the creature. He had been looking for one for so long, so long, and here it was. He had begun searching for the rare snake before he had even met his wife and now after she was gone he had finally found it, he had finally found it.
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