BEAVERTON VALLEY TIMES (Portland, Oregon) 23 October 08 Tigard's Judd Fite has a serious passion for snakes (Kristen Forbes)
Benton, Ark. It’s the town where the film “Slingblade” was filmed and the town where 34-year-old Judd Fite was born. It’s also the town where the Tigard resident was first introduced to snakes.
“We lived out in the country, in the outskirts of town,” says Fite. “We had a big swamp by our house, so there was certainly no shortage of snakes that would just show up in our yard or our garage. When I was a real young kid, my dad was scared to death of snakes. So whenever one showed up in the yard, he made it out to be such a huge event, we thought the sky was falling,” says Fite, whose father coached football at the high school Fite attended.
Fite recalls that as a young boy, it was always exciting to watch the way his dad responded when snakes entered the yard. After a while, though, he wondered why his dad always wanted to kill the snakes he encountered.
“The more I was around them, I started trying to understand: Why is he wanting to kill these snakes? They’re actually kind of neat. So I got to the point where I would go out on my own, looking around the swamp as a little kid, catching these snakes and just studying them on my own,” says Fite.
So began a lifelong passion for snakes.
Several prestigious colleges, including Harvard, recruited Fite to play football after high school. He decided to attend the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. When he graduated four years later, he was commissioned as an officer and went to Texas and Florida for training. He was then stationed in Omaha, Neb., where he worked as an electronic warfare officer – in other words, a specialized navigator. During multiple deployments, Fite spent time overseas and was able to visit many locales.
“I used that as an opportunity to pursue my big hobby of looking for snakes, which is something that I had gotten into when I was really young and just kept up with through the years,” says Fite.
Fite educated himself about snakes by collecting, observing and reading. To complement his biology major in college, he performed several independent research studies about snakes. He even kept three snakes in an aquarium inside a box behind his bunk –— no small feat at an academy where strict room checks are the norm.
“Some of the select cadets that knew I had these snakes would come around in the evenings sometimes during feeding time and everyone would gather around on the bed units and we’d pull the snakes out in the middle of the floor. It was just kind of an exciting thing, a stress reliever, to gather around and watch the snakes feed,” says Fite.
In Nebraska, Fite was in charge of a survival program, educating aircrew members about how to survive off the land if shot down and how to handle hazardous wildlife. He used this as an excuse to talk to Professor Dan Fogell, a herpatologist studying Nebraska’s four species of pit vipers.
“We hit it off, and from then on, he let me help them out with some of their research projects. So I really learned how to study snakes from him,” says Fite.
During some of his deployments, the scuba-certified Fite observed the yellow bandit sea snake and zeroed in on Southeast Asia’s habu, a pit viper. He studied Anacondas in Peru. Lately, his favorite snake excursions have occurred in southwestern states, like Arizona and New Mexico. For the last six or seven years, Fite has taken a trip out to the Southwest about once a year.
“There are so many different species of snakes you can find there,” says Fite.
And what about here, in the Pacific Northwest?
“Most people wouldn’t think of Oregon as a hot spot for snakes, and it’s not. But there is a snake species up here — the only venomous species here, a rattlesnake called the Northern Pacific rattlesnake. Its scientific name (Crotalus Oreganus) got its name from the state of Oregon,” says Fite, who has found several non-venomous species in the area, also.
In 2005, after serving as an officer in the Air Force for eight years, Fite separated from the military and couldn’t wait to leave Omaha.
“Being stationed in Omaha, Neb., you can’t be further from the ocean or further from the mountains,” says Fite.
Fite came to Portland as a surgical equipment sales representative for a company affiliated with Johnson & Johnson. (In addition to his B.S., Fite also holds an MBA.)
“I worked for them for three years. Doing the job, I really enjoyed the science behind it and the technology. I enjoyed the anatomy part of it. I spent every day in the operating rooms with the surgeons and really enjoyed and appreciated what they were doing. I did not feel that being a salesman was a personality fit for me. I really wanted to be on the other side of the table,” says Fite.
Fite has applied for medical school and will find out if he was accepted this spring. He hopes to combine his passions for medicine and snakes and work with snakebite treatments.
He and his girlfriend Danielle, a pilot he met while in the Air Force, live in Tigard.
Tigard's Judd Fite has a serious passion for snakes