TRI-CITY HERALD (Kennewick, Wash.ington) 06 May 05 Dead rattler may have legs (John Trumbo)
Nancy McLeod of West Richland knew she had snakes in her back yard, but she had no idea one of them was a biped.
The 2-foot-long reptile, which McLeod believes is a rattler, was discovered Thursday morning on her Red Mountain Road property as a friend was helping her burn tumbleweeds.
Pedro Osorio, 46, said he shoved a pitchfork into a tumbleweed, lifted it and saw the snake on the ground. After placing the weed onto the fire, he forked the snake and tossed it into the flames also.
Osorio said he noticed the strange little appendages on the charred snake after the fire died down.
"I called to Nancy, 'Come here and look at these little legs,' " he said.
Each leg, about a half-inch long, protrudes from the snake's body about 4 inches from the tip of the tail.
"Obviously it is a mutant," said McLeod, who wasted no time in trying to alert Kelly Cassidy, curator of the Conner Museum at Washington State University in Pullman.
"They were very, very interested," she said, noting that the researcher told her to put the snake into a sealable plastic bag and to keep it in a freezer until someone from the university could pick it up.
If the snake does have legs, it would be a rare discovery of interest to herpetologists and paleontologists.
A report in the April 1997 issue of Science News magazine discussed how paleontologists Michael W. Y. Lee and Michael W. Caldwell believed the fossil of a 40-inch-long creature with stubby rear legs may be a missing link between a snake and a lizard.
The fossil, known as a Pachyrhachis problematicus, was discovered in 1978 near Jerusalem. Its tiny legs, while fully formed, were too small to serve any purpose, noted the magazine's report.
Unfortunately, McLeod and Osorio didn't have time to realize the potential significance of their reptilian visitor.
"If I ever find another one, I'll try to keep it alive," Osorio said.
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/6458377p-6337893c.html
TRI-CITY HERALD (Kennewick, Wash.ington) 07 May 05 Snake story lacks legs to stand on (John Trumbo)
The amazing story about a West Richland snake having legs was too amazing to be true.
Nancy McLeod contacted the Herald on Thursday, saying she had what she thought was a rattlesnake with a pair of tiny leglike appendages.
A reporter and editors ran with the tale, but more than a few readers savvy about snakes notified the newspaper Friday morning that those legs were more than likely the reptile's sex organs, which were expelled from the body when it was tossed alive onto a pie of burning tumbleweeds.
"Those aren't legs at all," said Mike Wingfield, a Richland resident, self-described retired snake handler and amateur herpetologist. He said the appendages are the snake's hemipenes, a sexual feature also present in lizards.
"When snakes die in agonizing pain, like being burned alive, the penises expose themselves," he said.
Kenneth V. Kardong, who is a faculty member at Washington State University's biological sciences division, said the picture of the dead snake in the Herald showed what looked to him like hemipenes.
"We don't know why they have two, not one (penis). But it would give them great bragging rights in the locker room," he said.
McLeod said she had no clue as to what the appendages really were. "They looked like legs to me," she said Friday after being told the snake story didn't have legs to stand on.
"It doesn't matter to me," McLeod said. She said she plans to give the dead snake to the museum at WSU in Pullman, if officials there still want it.
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/6462349p-6341937c.html
