Montanas bullsnakes are just incredible! I used to love finding them outside of Great Falls, Mt. Plains garter snakes in abundance, and so pretty. I had to go all the way to Rapid City, South Dakota before I found a pale milksnake. WHOA!!!! What a beauty!! I was glad to move where I could find kingsnakes in abundance, and red diamond rattlesnakes, Southern Pacific rattlers (helleri), Mojave greens, Speckled , dang!, name it! Southern California was reptile country bigtime! Loved Arizona for reptiles too. But, CP were my first love, and still are. Now I only have 1 Cal King, and 2 Desert Kingsnakes, and that is enough for now.
I noticed in my Google search that the last name for the Northern widow was changed from nortensis to something else. The spiders I found in 1961 were actually unknown to many of the people I talked to in Montana. One gentleman said if I could find more than one black widow in a day, he'd give me Ten bucks. I brought him 10 spiders, and got the money. He couldn't believe that we had widows in Montana! Even more exciting was the radio station in Great Falls, KUDI. Don't even know if they exist anymore. I told a disc jockey he had BW spiders in the back of his station, and he outright called me a liar. And said so over the air. During one song, he left his seat, went out back with me, and opened the door to the cellar under the radio station. His jaw dropped to his knees when he saw the number of spiders he had hanging in their webs going down the cellar entrance. At least 7 PHAT pregnant females. He went back to his seat inside the station, and publicly apologized to the little kid who proved him wrong. That was a fun day for me. I was eleven at the time.