LANCASTER NEW ERA (Pennsylvania) 08 February 05 Leapin’ lizards - At last, Lancaster gets a herpetology club. A what? (Ad Crable)
Lancaster County: Lancaster County has a new herpetology club.
That’s nice, you say, about time. But what the heck is it?
The Lancaster Herpetology Society is for those into snakes, turtles, frogs, lizards, crocodiles, salamanders, newts, toads and a host of other reptiles and amphibians.
It will be for other “herpers” who feel, as Adam Darrenkamp does, that “there’s nothing as cool as the head of a snake.
“It’s almost like a smug smile,” says Darrenkamp, the 20-year-old founder of the club. “If I see a snake, I’ve got to at least catch that thing and hold it.”
But you don’t have to know what frog squeezing is to be a member. (Frog squeezing refers to the entertaining and harmless practice of catching an American toad during the spring mating season and slightly pinching its body so that its call goes through a number of amusing pitches.)
Darrenkamp, a West Hempfield Township resident who runs a herpetology club at Millersville University, hopes the club will be a place people can come to for the straight poop on reptiles and amphibians as pets.
Even though he works in a pet shop and breeds snakes as a hobby, Darrenkamp tries to dissuade people from keeping a number of critters as pets.
The pet shop he works at is full of snakes and lizards that customers have brought back after they became too large or expensive to care for.
For example, people are prone to buying an inexpensive and cool-looking iguana and sticking it in a small glass aquarium, not realizing it will eventually grow to be 6 feet long.
Other unsuspecting pet owners do not care for their pets responsibly. An unwavering diet of mice and crickets for snakes and lizards, for example, is unhealthy, just like feeding your kids nothing but Big Macs and fries.
On the other hand, snakes can be among the easiest, manageable and easy-going pets you can have, except possibly fish, Darrenkamp notes.
Though he says new members will dictate how the club is run and the breadth of its activities, Darrenkamp envisions a place where herpers can share their common passion and exchange tips on raising reptiles and amphibians.
He plans field trips to each other’s homes to see personal collections, forays to marvel at spring peepers, Jefferson salamanders and marbled salamanders at vernal ponds, as well as trips to regional herpe shows.
He wants the club to be a forum for diverse interests, from those who want to save rattlesnakes and turtles in the wild to those who want to tout a good book they’ve read.
A monthly newsletter is planned.
Darrenkamp, who currently breeds bull, king and corn snakes, as well as geckoes, in his home, thinks the time is right for such a club.
Keeping amphibians and reptiles as pets is at an all-time high and herpe shows are packed, according to Darrenkamp.
The herpe bug struck early for Darrenkamp.
He was 8 when a small northern brown snake slithered underneath the family’s garage door. Darrenkamp kept it for a few days and let it go. But it changed him forever.
Unfortunately, his mother was scared to death of snakes. Darrenkamp smuggled his first snake into his room by assuring mom that he had a legless lizard.
Local naturalist and TV personality Jack Hubley also got hooked on snakes in adolescence.
His protective mother had told him he shouldn’t play in the leaves piled on the edge of the street because there were dens of snakes in them.
Wrong deterrent.
“I said, ‘I’ve got to get out there,’ ” recalls Hubley, who is helping get the local herpetology club off the ground.
That began a long run of forbidden behavior in the Hubley household in which snakes and all manner of critters were sneaked into terrariums that lined two walls of Jack’s bedroom.
“There’s something about a snake,” says Hubley, who currently cares for 14 snakes for his wild animal shows.
“It’s like a magical thing. There’s this irresistible urge to touch them. That movement, that quickness, it’s all madly attractive to us.”
At last, Lancaster gets a herpetology club