Don't be an 'item' for this guy!

Gopher snake, Photo by Bob Wenrick 12/08/10

Who said herpetologists don't have a sense of humor? My favorite line in this article: "Living prey items are dispatched by constriction." Thankfully, Bob managed to snag a photo without becoming a prey item. Snakes are out and about - not many, of course, but my family also saw a gopher snake as well as its false twin, a western diamondback, in Sabino canyon last week.
An update on the pronunciation of leucism/leucistic. As I suspected, it's from the Greek for white. Think 'leukocytes' (white blood cells) and say: 'Luke, I'm your father.' Luke-ism  or Luke-istic.