Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hey Rainer, i remember in one of your posts months ago you stated that you shared a table at a show with the famous L.Lemke. Would/could you please share some info about him like any of his achievments in herpetoculture, thanks in advance.

On Lloyd Lemke. Oh boy I don't even know where to begin. There are so many stories about the man a book should be written about him

He was a friend who I spent many a day at his house and sometimes helping him maintain his collection. He shared his life with his wife Sonny. There whole house was full of reptiles. Every room had cages except his bedroom and kithcen. His backyard was also a managerie of cages for lizards, turtles and tortioses. All built to proper specs with the animals in mind (not how we think they should live)I basically learned all my husbandry from Lloyd and have stuck to what he uesed and did to this day (including using pine shavings)

He travled and collected in mexico and also imported many reptiles to the US. He brought in a list of specmens that we work with today that have since not been impoeted to US soil.

H was the first person to have a woma . There was one account ai remember about a very rare lizard..

One time in approx 1986 he was expecting a large shipment of some new kind of skink. i was one of the first people to know about it and helped him build his outdoor enclosers for the expected arrivals. It was a shipment from the Solomon islands. The Solomon islands prehensile skink.

When the shipment arrived in Cali the export people at the airport were suspicious of the unusual lizards they contacted authorties and they confiscated the 1000 lizards. The L.A. zoo took them in and lost more than half his shipment because they did not know the babies need to eat the fecal matter from the parents to get the enzymes to digest their food. This was after he got into several arguements and debates with the curator.

When he finally received the shipment we had everything set up and he knew what to do and how raise these things along with the few babies that survived. Needless to say he had a green thumb and studied these speies to come to his conlusions for theri proper hubandry. They were in bad shape when he got them. A month later all was well and the very rare lizards were avaliable for the first time for a small fee to US breeders. He also successesfully bred these lizards for the first time when all the zoos that had them failed in the past.

His collecting travels were made up of how the good old days of herping used to be. Before there were laws prohibiting transport of snakes into the US he used to go down to mexico and showed the locals how to search for a particular snake. While everybody and their mother was searching the field for his target species he would go and drink beer on the beach with John Ruiz (another fabeled herper) and play vollyball all day . At the end of the day they would acquire hundreds of species which would have taken them months to collect themselves. The mexicans turned them in and where payed a nominal fee.. and so it went.

There are many other such accounts. I am sure that someone like FR could chime in on one or two..

FR you out there?

write a biograghy on the great L.Lemke.

I know I would buy his biography.

Og and sorry about the typos. My computer has been freezing up because of a virus so I have to type fast.

it's good some of his bloodlines are still around.

Did he ever hy-bridize species or cross subspecies? that you are aware of? thanks again..........

He did offer Jungle Corns on his list. I don't know if he made the cross himself or was working with ones already crossed.
He was not adverse to using the word "pure" either. I heard him say it several times either to me when I was at his facility or to people on the phone.
A couple other things, he recognized nelsoni as different from sinaloans and had what he called "real nelsoni from Colima". He recognized brooksi as different from floridana, he called the lavenders that are out now floridana, not brooksi.
He also had at least 2 things that are gone or nearly gone today, solid chocolate cal kings and amelanistic Eastern Black Kings (niger). He said his eastern blacks were from Tennessee. I saw his and they were neat, yearling had very little pattern. I have to wonder though why after he died those disappeared and several years later amel Easterns showed up, supposedly originating in Tennessee. He did say the babies were hard to get feeding when I asked him why they were only $100 and brand new.

very interesting and thanks again.

He recognized brooksi as different from floridana, he called the lavenders that are out now floridana, not brooksi.

Lloyds lavender phase was a different line than the Tim Ricks lav. His looked more like floridana phase lavenders.

I am also not sure if the two lines (strains)are allelic with each other. I don't think anyone ever crossed them to find out(?)

Oh, I didn't know that. I thought both came from one line, sorry.
What I heard was a guy named Tim Ricks caught or produced a lavender floridana. I never heard of lavander (or is it amel?) popping up in brooksi. If I may ask, do you know where they came from?
Anyways, I always liked Lloyd because he knew so much about the animals in the wild and the captive morphs as well.

I know I would buy his biography.

At first glance, you seem to be an excellent candidate for the "someone" who should write this biography. You could offer a great deal of first person insight. You share the interest in herpetoculture. Obviously, I don't know his life or yours, but you might ask yourself who else would be better qualified to undertake this effort. If your answer is yourself, you should at least start an outline.

Bill

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It's not how many snakes you have. It's how happy and healthy you can keep them.

You are correct. Maybe I should. But that is a huge undertaking. First off I would need at least a year of interviews with people who knew him. I remember him talking on the phone a lot with many people who are legends in the business. Actually, come to think of it. I also remember he talked to FR a few times when I was over at his house in the mid 80's.

We all have only 24 hours in a day, and we have plenty of demands on those hours. What's clear is that you have the passion to do a good job, and I find that passion admirable.

Because the herp community is small, you wouldn't make a great deal of money. If you're going to try, I'd suggest that you talk to some librarians about what factors make a book popular with people who purchase for libraries. If you can expand your customer base to include libraries, particularly school libraries, the project could be more financially rewarding. I have a friend who works at a public library, and I could ask her whether she has any thoughts on this issue.

You might also pass along as many of the technical details of snake keeping as you can. If the book helps herpers understand how to keep and breed snakes, more of us who might be on the fence about whether to purchase will tip over to the buying side.

All the best,

Bill
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It's not how many snakes you have. It's how happy and healthy you can keep them.