This beautiful fellow is a black-tailed rattlesnake, Crotalus molossus. Naturally, they are not found in turquoise and coral in the wild, let alone with wings, but when I was working on this design, my friend and creative consultant, Beth, commented that it looked like a blanket design from the SouthWest. So, I made the fanciful winged version in brighter colors. The naturally colored, wingless version is the "yellow" phase of the species. They also come in a "gray" phase. The species is found in southern Arizona and New Mexico, southwestern Texas, and down into Mexico. They can grow to be close to 4 feet long and are venomous pitvipers.
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