Dear fellow garter snake admirers,

first I'd like to introduce myself: my name is Daniel Gruebner, I'm from Hamburg, Germany. As a member of the "European Garter Snake Association" (EGSA) I'm responsible for the editorial work of the association and the magazine "The Garter Snake" (TGS) that is being published quarterly. The magazine only contains articles on Thamnophis, p.e. personal keeping experiences of different Thamnphis spec., interesting observations on the animals, results of field herpetological research, taxonomical news, medical knowledge and tips.

So far there have only been articles by authors from the German-speaking Europe, so most of the articles were in German, sometimes with a short summary in English.

I endevour now to enrich the magazine with reports of those keepers from the home countries of Thamnophis subspecies and to create the possibility for an international exchange of ideas of the different keepers. To make our magazine interesting for English-speaking readers there need to be English articles in it.
Therefore I would like to ask you, if you are interested in participating in setting up a bilingual magazine and to send in articles from time to time.

There are different types of articles in "The Garter Snake". On the one hand there are main articles that can have several pages but there are also shorter messages that cannot be longer than half a Din A4 page. Subjects of interest are any of the ones listed above.

Here are some examples of past articles:

- keeping conditions of Thamnophis fulvus
- Feeding of different Thamnophis spec.
- Garter Snakes on German TV
- Keeping garters in an outdoor terrarium
- tetrataenia: crossing the Dutch and the Austrian bloodline
- in touch with science
- short messages (like: "thamnophis without teeth!?" "mating activities between several males" ...)
- introduction of new members "my home" or "how I got to keep garter snakes"
- humorous
- ...

My plans are to have at least two English articles in each magazine and a couple of short messages. I'm trying to find many people from English speaking countries so if everyone writes just one or two articles a year that should be plenty.
Of course you will be sent those magazines in which your articles are published.

One of the first to support us is HerperHelmz who handed in an interesting article on the keeping of thamnophis brachystoma that will be published in our next magazine. Again, thank you a lot for it!

You can get an insight in the work of the EGSA at "http://www.egsa.de . There you will find a sample of our magazine which unfortunately is only in German. On the homepage you will also find a form you can fill in to become a member of the association. As a member you will be sent "The Garter Snake" every three months.

Information on me and my animals can be found on my webpage http://www.gartersnake.de

I'd be very happy to hear back from you and to maybe receive some articles from you. If you have any questions, suggestions or even articles please contact me at webmaster@gartersnake.de .

Thank you a lot. Wishing you a wonderful Christmas,

Daniel Gruebner

PS: If it is interesting for you I will send you an electronic version of "The Garter Snake" The File has a size of about 11 MB.
Gartersnake-Homepage

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