A hundred yards behind Brandon Ballengée’s art studio, in a former cane field near Lafayette, Louisiana, his dog lollops right over a snake. “Oooh, look at that! A black-masked racer!” says Ballengée—a biologist by training—in a thrilled whisper. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay,” he tells the snake, before it slithers into the forest of pecan, holly, persimmon, and pine.
Four decades ago, these woods—home to tanagers and