Anybody who’s visited the old blog even a handful of times likely knows I’m pretty enamored of all types of critters. I just always have been, and that includes some, like snakes, that give a lot of people the creeps.

Myself, tarantulas and other big spiders basically freak me out, I’d just as soon not come into contact with a slug, and when a bat surprises me — like by clinging to the back of a sack of nails I’m grabbing off a barn shelf — that’s an adrenaline rush I don’t really need.

Back to snakes now …

This time of year — at least on sunny days — snakes aren’t hard to find in the mid-Willamette Valley. Still, I was surprised to come across a 3-foot bull snake just south of downtown Corvallis a couple Saturday’s ago; that was the largest snake I’d seen in a while.

Mowing my lawn last weekend before the rains set in, I came across one of the bigger garter snakes you’re apt to find; it was probably 18 inches long and its body was as thick as my index finger.

As I always do when I happen upon a snake in a precarious spot, like where I might accidentally mow over the top of it, I moved it; this one was relocated to a backyard flower bed.

Anyway, all of this merely serves as an intro for this week’s list, my Top 7 reptiles (all of them fictional, as you will note):

1. Godzilla.

2. Dino the dinosaur.

3. Gorn, Star Trek creature.

4. Kaa, from the Jungle Book.

5. The Geico gecko.

6. Wally Gator.

7. The crocodile from Peter Pan.