Active Recovery Day at Sholom Park

I had a nice little walk at Sholom Park in Ocala. I knew it was going to be a good day for finding some of the most impressive arachnid specimens, primarily of the golden orb weavers. I really love these magnificent spiders, especially the females, which are quite massive and just downright photogenic. 

 And of course there's always the requisite cute little lizards. I didn't see as many as I had hoped, but this fence lizard really caught my eye.  It was a good-sized one for sure!

 The biggest highlight of the day, though, was the coral snake. My first thought when I saw something moving was "ooh! pretty snake!" followed immediately by "it's probably a coral snake".  My bestie, K (who also expressed a fair amount of jealousy at my lucky discovery), confirmed it after I showed him the pictures. When the rhyme doesn't stick in the mind, the black nose and the fact that there's red, black, and yellow, are confirmation enough.  This little fellow was pretty big for its species - it was just shy of 2 feet long and apparently they're typically more like 1-1.5 feet long.  I was so honored to see this little critter!