Ive been wanting to write about my herping experiences of last year since the loss of my computer destroyed all of my written records, and thought this board would be most likely to sympathize. It was my best year of herping to date with my getting an apartment that allows snakes and transportation to visit many wild areas, and my worst after the loss of my car, digital camera and laptop so that I dont even have the pictures and notations I took throughout the year.
I saw 25 water snakes, enough to hand-pick particular colors and patterns, and saw my first courtship and mating of this species (my large female gave birth to 36 babies in August which I released). Compare this to only 4 black rat snakes and 4 racers for the year. I caught a dozen different species including ones Ive never seen in Virginia such as the crayfish snake.
Being stranded at work was both a blessing and a curse, for the nature staff in their inexperience filled the snake cage with cedar shavings and my water snake got an eye infection from burrowing in it which I did not prevent in time, although she is still quite able to fend for herself. They also released everything I had except the smaller snakes they were saving to feed someone's kingsnake (the only reason I was not supervising was that the program staff being short-handed had me doing the work of 3 people). This setback was cemented by having to take a non-science job at the end of the season that has prevented me from doing any herping since.
I am lucky however to still have the basic staples I wanted, although every snake Ive kept was a different shade of mean. Not one of them was friendly like so many Ive caught in the past. The black racer caught by our climbing director would track you from inside the cage and strike at the lid getting his teeth stuck in the mesh. The day I released him it took 15 minutes to remove him from the building, and he pushed a hole through my strongest net and got his body stuck halfway through. The garter given to me by a pet shop is untameable, and the subadult black rat snake I salvaged is an escape artist that still musks at the sight of people (this morning I found him in the hallway). The nerodia took months to tame which used to take me 10 days.
I am anxious for the warm season to begin again so I can rebuild, but a lot more than the weather has to change. I'm buying a couple of snakes today to try and accelerate that feeling although I almost never buy captives. The other day I heard a woman say "a snake???" as if she was surprised to see one in a pet shop. We field herpers are too often forced under the wheels of time, budget and civilization much like our scaled friends themselves, and our knowledge and appreciation goes to waste. The first signs of spring will console us though.
Len
