Knowledge of Creeping Animals

Herpetology is quite literally the knowledge of creeping animals. While I am far from an reptile and amphibian expert, my appreciation for words and penchant for prolixity make me quite happy to have an excuse to use the underutilized word for one who actually IS an expert on such things. Indeed, ignoring the word for the discipline "herpetology" and the related title "herpetologist" is nearly criminal in my mind, and I daresay Daniel agrees. About two weeks ago we watched the epic, um, masterpiece "Snakes on a Plane," in which the protagonists repeatedly and franticly referred to "snake experts," prompting my erudite husband to proclaim, "Herpetologists! They are called herpetologists."

Ahhhh... I love him. And, I confess, I like snakes, too.

I'm not disturbed by snakes in general. In fact, they excite in me more curiosity than disdain, which may explain how all but a handful of the snakes I have encountered in the wild and in captivity in my lifetime came to bite me: I get close enough to get bit. That is not to say that I am reckless... in every case I was quite sure they were not venomous before I laid a finger on them. But, I have received -- from the grass snake in Colorado to the king snake in the gutter of our Whittier house, and the boa constrictor at a friend's house -- numerous little reminders that even non-venomous snakes have a bite.

The snake that opened the door to my curiosity and high regard was Wilhelm Von Snakenstein, or "Willy," as he was known in our house. Wilhelm came to live with us when, one night (a rainy one, I think), Dad came home from his accounting courses, while studying for his master's degree in taxation, with a plastic bag containing a coffee cup that held a little something he had found outside the college building. Willy was a small, unassuming gopher snake who, aside from suffering from delusions that he was actually a rattler and having a penchant for squeezing cute little white mice to death before swallowing them whole, turned out to be quite a pleasant companion. I offer as proof the fact that Willy never did bite me, in spite of my apparently irresistible appeal to snakes.

Willy occupied a small aquarium in our playhouse and dined semi-regularly on the mice we supplied. At first, little more than a baby himself, he could only stomach the rather disturbing little "pinkies," but he grew to appreciate the larger, much more pity-inducing cute little fuzzy mice for whom I always rooted (sometimes more secretly than others) when they were deposited in his cage. Most of them lasted minutes, others lasted days, perhaps giving Willy a little bite on the tail when he worried them, but whatever the length of their stay in the chamber of death, I hated to see them go. Then again, I felt for their executioner. After all, he was only acting on orders from the big Man upstairs. I am sure that if he had been ordered from the dawn of time to enjoy the crunch of a nice beetle or the pleasing coolness of a leaf of lettuce, he would have done as he was told. As it was, he went through the humiliation month after month of having to disfigure himself with a rodent's girth, sometimes leaving, for a moment or two, a strangely long non-bifurcated tongue hanging out of his bulging neck and head.

I liked Willy. I enjoyed having him as a pet. However, my mother, who I don't think particularly enjoyed buying mice for the slaughter and cleaning up snake droppings, finally had her way, and Willy took up residence in the Biology department at Biola University. For a few years I heard the occasional report about his academic career. It seems he preferred fieldwork to office work and tended to slither off God knows where for months at a time, before re-emerging in some cupboard or other when it was time for a nice meal for him and a good scare for some unsuspecting student who just wanted a materials to prepare a fresh specimen.

Willy was amazing, and he was an education for me. Moving here, however, has opened up a whole new world of herpetological possibilities. Our proximity to a small stream and the abundance of trees and tall grasses in our yard makes the place where we live prime real estate for snakes. On our first visit to the property I spied a rather nondescript greyish snake about a foot in length. I still don't know what kind of snake it was, but I poked at it gently with a stick to verify that it was alive. I'm still rather vexed that I cannot remember enough about it to identify it, and it is perhaps for that reason that I have become obsessed with logging and tracking and identifying any and every slithering thing that passes in my line of sight.

We've since seen a 3-foot-ish long black racer snake on the far bank of the stream. I failed to capture it on film, because rather than handing the camera calmly to Dan, who had spotted the snake in his more gentle wandering, I rather clumsily approached the near bank of the stream, disturbing a frog or other jumping creature, which proceeded to plop loudly into the water. The splash was all the racer needed to convince him that the tall grasses beyond the stream were more hospitable, and, true to his name, he was off at what would be termed a run if he had legs.

Racers and lazy grey garden snakes are one thing. Copperheads are another. I am quite certain that I will eventually meet one, and I would like to recognize it for what it is when I do. Yes, having copperheads about makes me a trifle nervous when it comes time to let the cats prowl the chain-link-fenced portion of the yard, because I have been quite certain that curiosity would get the best of them when faced with a slithering, glittering, animated toys. My suspicion was confirmed today when MooMoo found her first snake.

Far from a copperhead, MooMoo's little discovery was a tiny southern ringneck (known as diadophis punctatus punctatus to our distinguished herpetologist friends) that was no bigger than a penny when he coiled up and wished like anything that we would go away. He was so small that it looked very much like MooMoo was again playing with an invisible toy, as she often does when we start to settle down for the night and she becomes possessed by the irrepressible need to run around like a mad-kitty on a catnip bender. He wasn't, in fact, invisible, but he was incredibly small. I captured him in a small container in order to take a few photographs, looked him over to see if he had any obvious and serious wounds, and then let him loose a bit further from the fenced portion of the lawn than he had started out. He slithered almost imperceptibly toward the stream, displaying a great deal of unmistakable relief in his silent retreat.

Once our little visitor was gone, Daniel looked at me and smiled. "Now you have an excuse to go look at some more of those amateur herpetology websites." I grinned back. I did indeed. I did indeed. I suppose that, helped by my field assistant, MooMoo, I have developed a something of a passion for, well, acquiring knowledge of creeping animals.