TRIBUNE-REVIEW (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) 13 August 06 Snake expert credits mountain upbringing (Carolyn Holland)
Steve Harwig, an 85-year-old herpetologist from Lower Burrell, grew up with Laurel Mountain Borough.
Harwig was 8 years old in 1930 when his father, Carl G. Harwig, founded Laurel Mountain Park and ordered a house to be built.
As a child, Harwig spent summers in the cottage. He remembers visiting with actress Shirley Jones when she stayed with a neighbor and picking huckleberries and blueberries.
But most of all, Laurel Mountain Park, which later became a borough, helped to nourish Harwig's interest in snakes.
Since 1977, Harwig has been a volunteer staff member in the amphibians and reptiles section of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
In 1968, he filed the first of his 38 annual snake reports for the Pittsburgh museum.
His legacy will be his personal eight record books of snakes, each 300 pages long.
He doesn't go out in the field much anymore because he has balance problems that require him to use a cane.
"I can't hike in the woods," he said. "I haven't been out for a couple of years."
But he continues snake hunting with a team of herpetologists affectionately known as "Steve's Gang."
They include Tom Diez, a photographer from Oakmont, Allegheny County; Dave Kissel, of Westmont, Cambria County; Ken Stairs and Doug Walters, of Rockwood, Somerset County; Glen Davis, of Apollo, Armstrong County; and Al Hollingsworth, of Seward.
While they hunt, Harwig stays behind in the car.
Harwig began studying timber rattlesnakes in 1936 at age 15.
In 1975, he was considered one of the world's leading authorities on the timber rattlesnake's denning habits.
Harwig hunted rattlesnakes and found them on rugged rock ledges with magnificent views, rock-strewn hillsides abutting rushing trout streams, and rocky meadows with sphagnum moss, 4-foot-high ferns, huckleberry, ground pine and mountain laurel.
He captured, measured, recorded and released snakes in more than 300 dens in 25 Pennsylvania counties, as well as in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and New York. He's made at least 2,947 den visits, covered 4,669 miles and seen 4,800 rattlers and 1,478 copperheads.
"A den visit can be like a fishing trip -- sometimes successful; other times, no luck," Harwig said. "Most visits were May through September, but they can occur year-round."
In 1940, he received a $1 to $2 bounty gathering snakes for an armed forces project.
He sent them to the late Ross Allen, a nationally known herpetologist in Florida who had a government contract to collect venom from snakes gathered from throughout the United States. The venom was used to make a serum to prevent deaths of military men bitten by snakes.
"Because of that serum, there wasn't one death from snake bites in the United States during World War II," said Harwig, a 1939 Wilkinsburg High School graduate who served during the war with the U.S. Navy in Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C.
The majority of timber rattlesnakes are either yellow or black, Harwig said.
"The prettiest yellow snake I ever caught was 50 inches, without a blemish," he said. "They used to say the yellow were all female, but that was wrong. It just happens that in the Upper Mississippi region and in some Virginia mountain ranges they are all yellow, and in parts of New York State they are all black."
In 1956, Harwig and another snake hunter, Elmer Cheuvront, caught a 32-inch white snake. There are albino snakes, but he's never seen one, he said.
Up until 1965, Harwig and his gang donated snakes to the zoo or the state Game Commission for use in lectures. His 1977 den histories showed a "definite lowering" of snake populations, he said.
This spring, Harwig didn't do much snake hunting. He missed his 2006 rattlesnake hunt at Parker State Park because of a medical appointment. His gang, who spotted a record 143 snakes in one day last year, went without him but saw no snakes.
In 2002, Thomas Tyson, a Laurel Mountain cottage owner, presented Harwig with an oil painting. Its title, "The Lair of the Snakemaster," describes both Harwig's cottage, which he sold this winter, and his lifelong interest in herpetology.
He still visits friends in Laurel Mountain, but as close as it is to his heart, it won't be his final resting place.
His stone is set in Our Lady of Hope Cemetery near his Lower Burrell home.
His said his love for herpetology limited his social life as a young man. He dated the future Violet Harwig off and on for 19 years before they finally married, too late to have children, he said. She died in 1994 after 27 years of marriage.
"The rattlesnakes, I stuck with them too much, and I stayed away from girls too much," he joked.
Snake expert credits mountain upbringing