my local rattlesnake

One of the first snakes I became fascinated with as a boy was our local large rattlesnake known as "the timber rattler" (C. H. horridus). (There is another rattlesnake species locally but that's a topic for another day) This handsome snake ranges from New England all the way down here to Texas and exhibits some crazy color and pattern variations across its range. The ones in NE Texas tend to have a light tan ground colors, dark chocolate chevrons along the dorsal surface and a nice crisp cinnamon stripe running most of the way down the spine. I have seen them up to 5-1/2 feet long. They tend to be very thick bodied so a snake this size looks absolutely enormous!

Growing up, I heard many "rural legends" about these snakes. Everyone had an uncle who killed one that was 8 feet long or their cousin got chased by one or their dad once had one jump out of a tree onto him. Basically, they all had some third person story about a terrifying experience with a demonic animal and that's why we should kill them all before they get us. I'm not going to type the 5000 words I want to about that, so let's move on.

What fascinated me wasn't the made-up/old wives' tales, it was the real world inaccuracies that presented themselves. This was my first exposure to how scientific knowledge works. Up until my experiences with the timber rattle snake I accepted everything the text books and experts told me as 100% truth. Then I learned that while science is the study of the universe around us, the resulting understanding of that universe is constantly growing and changing. As we learn more, you must be able to accept the new data and develop new understanding. The truth doesn't change, our understanding of the truth changes. I had quite a problem rectifying this with the local religious folks in my area but I won't type 5000 words about that either.

So, for example, I remember talking to a game warden who told me all about how a researcher had studied thousands of timber rattle snakes for many years and found that it took them 5-7 years to reach sexual maturity. I repeated this "fact" for years until I ran into a herpetologist from my area who explained that the researcher had done his studies in upstate New York and that snakes in warmer climates typically reached sexual maturity much quicker (2-3 years). I had been spreading lies! Not really, I had been spreading inaccuracies, sort of like the guy who insists a snake jumped out of a tree on to him. This makes everyone wary of the tree-climbing, person-jumping pit vipers of the Southern US, a story that typically turns out to be something like: The river flooded and to escape the rising waters non-aquatic snakes (sometimes even venomous ones) climbed up into low hanging tree branches. Fishermen running the river for cat fish in the flood waters floated under the trees, hit the branches and, voila, a legend is born!

Next is a much more scientific example of inaccuracies. When I was introduced to the timber rattlesnake I was told our local snake was a subspecies called "the canebrake rattlesnake" (C.H. atricaudatus). This was, in fact, what many text books said (a few still seem to say it) until a decade or so ago when new DNA testing seems to have proven that there is just one species.

Slightly unrelated but --> Here's a link to a super cool power-point that tracks some timber rattle snake populations through DNA testing

In my home state of Texas, the Timber rattle snake is protected but I'm not sure how that matters as anyone who sees a timber rattlesnake kills it, the easiest place to find one is DOR (dead on road) and I've never heard of anyone getting in trouble for it. As near as I can tell, their "protected" status only keeps law abiding citizens from catching and keeping them. (which is definitely a good thing). If you are an experienced hot-herp keeper, live in Texas and want a timber rattlesnake you can always buy one from a dealer in a state where it is legal but do you really want to? How can the game warden tell where the snake came from? He can't so the responsibility falls to you to provide adequate proof that your animal is legal. Seems a hassle in a state full of super cool legal animals.

As far as field herping goes, the timber rattlesnakes seem to be locally abundant, appearing over and over in certain areas while not at all in others. I, honestly don't think I've ever found one in the woods. They are secretive, ambush predators who spend most of their time on the leafy, forest floor waiting for squirrels and other rodents to run by. Their camouflage and reluctance to rattle serves them well. Typically, when I do run across one, it's in the road. Like this one I saw a couple days ago while riding my bicycle.

It occurs to me that I should have included some words of caution at the beginning of this post about NOT touching snakes in the wild but it occurs to me that all you need to know is most snakes in North America are harmless (to humans) and a few can hurt you terribly (even kill you). If you want to know the difference you will seek that knowledge out, other wise you'll just distrust all snakes regardless. I don't want you running into the woods picking up snakes because you think they are harmless. I want you to not freak out and run away just because you saw a snake.

While I'm talking about potentially dangerous snake bites I'll end with one more interesting this about this animal: its venom is sometimes incredibly neurotoxic. I have not been able to find any research explaining why it happens but I have read many articles written by herpers telling the same horrible story: experienced hot herp keeper gets bit, expects a long painful experience but instead suddenly dies. Snake venom is complex and I am certainly not qualified to go into the intricacies but as I understand it, venom is a mixture of complex proteins that attached to and destroy particular cell structures in the bodies of the organism that gets bit. Depending on the mixture the venom attacks blood, tissue (muscle/heart/lungs) and nerves.  Most North American pit vipers have a lot of muscle destroying venom and not a lot of nerve attacking venom (compared to, say, mambas and cobras). Typically what you worry about is death by hemorrhaging in the lungs or brain or infection days later due to all the tissue death. It's unpleasant but the snake's name is "horridus". Does that sound pleasant? It does not.

Wow. I ended on a low note considering I really like this animal.

OK, here's another picture to liven things back up.

Quick edit. Here's a video of this snake as he disappears into the under brush.

update: May 24, 2016

I’ve done a very bad job of making time to write for this blog, but I’ve also done a bad job of making time for nature so I guess the two go hand in hand. Anyway, here's an update.

Last year I sold some of my rat snakes in an effort to winnow the herd down to just a few predictable breeding pairs and some unrelated/distant relatives that might produce something new or interesting. I carefully scheduled my breeding around a trip I had to take so that I wouldn't have to worry about anyone laying while I was gone and everything has gone off spectacularly so far. I came back from my trip, the females all went through predictable sheds (with only 1 exception) and now they are starting to lay.

Despite having done this for almost 15 years now I am still excited every time my snakes lay and REALLY excited at the prospect of baby snakes hatching in a couple months. I was considering this feeling and realized that there's something odd about it. It's not the same as when your dog has puppies or your horse has a foal. Those animals are social and do work that can make your life better. It's also not like a cow having a calf or a sheep having a lamb. Those serve a great final purpose on my dinner plate!

It's more like sprouting plants or flowering trees. It would happen without me, but my efforts define the action. The baby snakes represent an ancient, pre-human nature where the dominant life forms hatch without any need of their mother or me. (That's called being precocial.) In nature the mother snake would make all the necessary decisions so that her eggs had a chance to hatch and once they peeped, it's up to the baby snakes, natural selection, and no small amount of luck to get them to adulthood and the next generation of reproduction. Imagine if oak trees could move around the forest and pick where to drop their acorns. It seems scary to someone born in a hospital, raised in a house, and fed from a refrigerator to think about a world where you pick the best part of the environment presented to you and drop off your kids with the hope they live long enough to reproduce.

OK, that last statement is unrealistic. The very nature of instinct is that the trees and snakes don't really care about their offspring. We HAVE to care because if we don't our weak, pink, babies would all die (that's called being altricial). So I have the instincts of a mammal who must care for it's young, modified by modern human desires that create large successful societies and I am attempting to participate in the creation of a new generation of animals that neither want nor need me (except by my own interference)

Nature assures reproductive success through simple odds. You need to make enough babies in such a way that enough of them survive to produce that many babies again in the same way. if your reproductive plan doesn't work, you go extinct. Now, I step in to replace as many environmental factors as I can. I keep, clean, and feed the adults. I select the potential parents. I set up the incubators and put the eggs in containers. I monitor and adjust the temperature, and the humidity while I wait for the signs of life and death from inside the eggs.

But I do something mother nature and mother snakes can't do. I learn. I read the works of other breeders. I document what I am doing, how long it takes and how successful it is. I can't hatch eggs from instinct but I can do it from knowledge and I think that's what makes me excited when the eggs hatch. In a universe that seems boundlessly, chaotic and uncontrollably unforgiving, I've figured out just enough to do my part in a system that required millions of years of evolutionary programing to become viable. Every baby snake that hatches makes me feel like I understand a little bit more about something most people take for granted, life. 

My Ethical Choices and Failures With Regards to Nature Part 2: Nature Strikes Back

I have been working on this part for several weeks now and I keep running off the rails trying to make points about how most of us are so far removed from nature (which is kind of presumptuous of me). I think I’m ready to get back on track and talk about how I’ve decided to interact with nature.

I have never been one of those “take only pictures, leave only foot prints” hippies. I like to learn things while I am in nature and that means interaction as well as observation. I like to see interesting things and that often means leaving the trail, wading in a stream, lifting up a log or turning over a rock. But I don’t go into nature with the intention of being the loudest animal in the forest nor do I leave a trail of trash and broken limbs in my wake. I feel utter contempt for the nameless hicks who will drive a half mile out into the woods and dump tires or the heartless logger who figures, “since I’m cutting down these trees anyway, who cares if I change my oil and leave the filters and cans laying on the ground?” East Texas is littered with broken glass, old furniture and car parts constantly flowing through our sandy soil disappearing and reappearing with the seasons.  It’s almost impossible to find a place around here where someone hasn’t thrown their trash on the ground and left it. I have spent three decades surrounded by these trashy people and I wish I could tell you they are just evil or malevolent; that their littering was malicious and we would be just to persecute them, but the reality is that they are more akin to spoiled children. No one taught them any different and their little minds can’t process that there’s a problem with what they are doing. Their homes will be littered with crap, their yards will be piled with trash and when they get out in the woods they continue the cycle. Even the people who don’t live in white-trash conditions often forget their manners once they are alone in the woods. Plenty of middle-class, mortgage-paying people go hunting or camping and leave as big a foot print as possible. Maybe they think the landscaper will fix it.

(Off the subject; when did they become “landscapers”? When I was a kid there were gardeners, grounds keepers, and kids mowing lawns for a few bucks but no landscapers. I know a guy who sold his company in Garland and moved out here in the woods, bought a trailer, a commercial lawnmower and some weed trimmers and makes as good a living as he did in Dallas. OK, back to the subject.)

Trash is bad and wanton destruction of nature is worse. As a species, we have millennia of experience “working the land” however in the last century it’s become A) a past time for bored suburbanites who want to control which flowers grow in their over-priced neighborhoods and B) Corporately controlled and scientifically rigorous agricultural endeavors that pay dividends. In these two scenarios I often see wanton destruction of nature.

The average neighborhood is filled with non-native plants that require ridiculous effort to keep thriving. It’s a horrible expense that the average homeowner pays for benefits they rarely see. Drive around any suburban neighborhood and count the yards with no one in them. We are a nation of people sitting inside watching TV. Anything at all could be growing in our yards and, most hours we are at home, we wouldn’t know the difference. There’s an argument to be made here that this is all the fault of climate control in our homes. Modern climate controlled homes can be any architectural style with no regard for the native climate. They retard our connection with our yards. In fact, the manicured yards and non-fruiting fruit trees are a non-functional extension of the design of the modern suburban house. Meh.

I shouldn’t waste any words on the commercial affect we have on the environment. From massive monoculture agriculture to ridiculous shopping centers consuming 3 times the area in parking as they do in buildings we have established a neat way to parse out space for our first world lifestyle. Take a trip to a very old, hilly city like San Francisco and see how they utilize space to get people into their banks, movie theaters and chain restaurants (lot’s o’ bus rides inside the city proper and lots of minimalist entrances and seating arrangements). Then go to somewhere flat and more recently populated, like Tucson. They’ll smooth out 5 acres of desert for one more Bank of America, Carmike Cinema or Applebee’s.  Where was I going with that? Oh yeah! We mow down the existing world and build back something that suits us better. You need thousands of acres of crops and livestock to feed a city full of people who use all their space, sunlight and water to grow things they can’t eat while living in houses that are too hot or too cold without climate control at the end of cul-de-sac that makes it doubly far to walk to anything you need in a city designed based on everyone owning a car and commuting to work. This is the modern first world we have built and if you want the advantages (right now) you have to take the problems too. But you could also grow carrots or tomatoes in your yard. I’m just saying.

So, what do I do when I’m not cutting down God’s trees to I build a deck surrounded by Asian shrubs that will look cool next to my store bought grill where I cook the meat I didn’t have to chase down or even butcher myself? (Full stop! That was sarcasm I don’t have or do any of those things. Continue!) I get high and mighty about not mowing down everything around me, that’s what. I clean up around my house to try to keep bugs and vermin at bay but I don’t burn down the woods “because that’s where they come from”. (I know people who actually burn shit down to keep the bugs at bay).

I’m not above using a trap or even poison to deal with pests but it has to be done carefully and it has to be cleaned up. I am well aware that what goes down my drain ends up in my water. I put thought into the soaps I use and I try to keep the strong chemicals to a minimum. (When I die of a mysterious fungal infection you have my permission to say “He should have cleaned better!”)

Every year, I grow something that I eat regularly, even if only for ceremony. I could certainly buy bigger, better peppers grown by pro’s in scientifically controlled hot houses and I could let the good people at McCormick supply me with all the spices, herbs and seasonings that I use (they supply me with most of them now). But I don’t mind waiting months to grow basil that they are cranking out for my consumption at a modest price. Some of you are thinking “You’re in the store anyway! Get with the program you nut.” But the fun is in the picking. There’s something that feels good about looking at that chicken in the pan and saying “Oh! I need to run outside and cut a couple sprigs off the rosemary bush.” It’s a link to how people have lived all over the world for generations. The grocery store is not.

Historically, we put forth the effort to change the parts of the world that we used. A Bronze Age farmer only cleared the land he could plant. More than that and he would have to watch on eyears work fade away into the wilderness when he could not keep it up in subsequent seasons. In the modern world we change everything we want whether we need it or not (like our yards, our cities and even our farms)

Wow. I got off the rails again and I still haven’t mentioned anything about spending time in nature.

My ethical choices and failures with regards to nature: Part 1

Talking about ethics is a sure fire way to expose yourself as a hypocrite. Over my next few posts I want to hit on what I think is right and wrong and how I have decided to interact with the natural world around me. Be patient, this is a lot of stuff.

I wanted to start with a definition of how the average person views nature, but I now realize I can only imagine what that is. I have spent 40 years watching the people and wildlife around me and I am still utterly confused by at least the people half. I really don’t understand what’s going on in the mind of the average suburbanite but I can guess what a lizard is thinking. So I may not be the best person to try to plot the modern first world human base line in relationship to the natural world. So, with discretion being the better part of valor, I’ll save that for a future post. Instead let's start with something more technical:

Dealing with the Natural World:              IT’S THE LAW!!!!!

What’s more relaxing than a nice early morning walk in the woods? Nothing as long as you aren’t in danger from hunters or trespassing on private property or disrupting some rare bird’s migration pattern with your mere presence! I’m being dramatic but before you go into nature you are duty bound by the unspoken rules of our polite society to familiarize yourself with the laws of your area with regards to public land use, private property rights, anti-littering practices and wildlife regulations. It’s your responsibility to follow the laws so that we don’t trample on other people’s right and we don’t destroy the natural world we are trying to enjoy! That sounded kind of hokey. Let me try this again. Most laws are design to act as rules that control or modify our behavior. The goal is to get a desired effect or avoid an unwanted problem by making everyone play by the rules. If everyone plays by the rules the game is supposed to be more fun for all of us. Quite screwing it up for everyone else you inconsiderate, trespassing, litter bug! When it comes to nature we assume the laws are written by people who study and want to protect nature. Their goal is to let the natural world carry on with minimal damage caused by us so we can learn from and enjoy the natural world around us. Listen to me, pretending like I know what is in the hearts and minds of faceless bureaucrats and self absorbed petty functionaries with tedious government jobs. Way to go, Mike, you were almost positive!

In this vein, here’s a neat story about the law and wildlife in my home state, Texas. When I started raising snakes, many moons ago, I was catching, observing and photographing many of the animals in my area. I didn’t keep most of them but I learned a lot first hand. I read up on the laws and made a point to get the proper permit to prevent any misunderstanding with the game wardens. They have their hands full with year round hunting and fishing enforcement. They don’t need to be trying to figure out how many of what kind of snake I have and if it was wild caught or captive bred. So back in 2006 I received a survey about upcoming changes to the way Texas regulates non-game animals. Prior to 2007 all animals either fell into “Protected”, “Game” or “Non-Game” categories and while the laws for “Protected” and “Game” where pretty intense, the laws for “Non-Game” were fairly succinct (albeit a little confusing). You were allowed to catch and keep a maximum number (I want to say 6) of any one species of non-game animals, and a total aggregate number (I think it was 25) of all species combined as long as you didn’t sell them. If you wanted to keep more you needed a non-game permit (license #548) and if you wanted to sell them you needed the commercial version (this requires an application and record keeping).  There was some more stuff about who could sell/trade what to whom but, moving on.

The new laws broke the non-game animals up into a white list and a black list.

The black list is a No sale/trade list design to remove these animals from commercial markets. You can now keep up to 6 animals from the black list privately but there is no permit to keep more or buy/sell/trade them. From the white list you can keep up to 25 animals without a permit. If you wanted to keep more or buy/sell/trade them you need the appropriate license. It’s not a bad design but I’m not convinced it works the way the lawmakers said they wanted it to (They were mainly worried about turtles and I think that part has worked but if it’s helping other animals, I do not know.)

non game permit info

the NARBC has a nice summary on their page

They also made some changes back then about exotic animals and basically banned roadside herp collecting which only last 4 years before they corrected that little boo-boo. (Both topics for another day)

Remember that survey I mentioned? Well, I filled mine out and sent it in and got a letter back several weeks later. {here's the .pdf scan} if you want to read a long boring synopsis that basically says “save the turtles” Who doesn’t want to save the turtles?  (Based on the report: China) The thing that got me in this report was the following: Here it is online somewhere around page 40

“The department sent surveys to all 331 persons currently holding a non-game or non-game dealer permit…..Response to the Survey was voluntary. A total of 64 persons responded to the survey.21 Identified themselves as hobbyists who do not collect for sale.”

By comparison in 2013-2014 there were over 24 million people in Texas and 2.5 million of them bought hunting/fishing licenses. That’s 10% compared to my .0014%

 The sad thing is that of 331 people asked to help shape the laws that they are willfully and consciously following by buying a permit, less than 20% bothered to respond. If you factor out the 44 commercial licensees then you get 287 non-game permit holders, like me, of which only 21 responded. Now we’re down to 7%.

These are people who had to do the research to get the permit. They made the effort to participate in the law right up to the point where they could have an actual voice. Before I get on my soap box, the point of the first several pages of the report is that there is minimal economic effect to helping the turtles. They didn’t cost the government any real $$ by changing the law. I appreciate the better organization of wildlife but I don’t think the people following the law were doing much damage. Regardless, ITS’ THE LAW!!! I follow it best I can.

Next time I’ll actually try to get to something ethical.

Fat Microbes news story

News story:

Something amazing hit the news a couple days ago. Researchers have been collecting microbes from brown bear droppings and implanting them in lab mice. The bacteria most present in the bears in summer makes the mice put on loads of fat without impairing glucose tolerance. The bacteria present in the bears in the winter caused the mice to burn fat easily without increasing insulin resistance. (Or at least that’s what it sounded like to me, read the article and be your own judge.)

They are quick to point out that this isn’t some magic bullet for obesity but it could have tremendous implications for several things not the least of which is how our own microbiome affects our metabolism. This is the next wave of amazing science which forces me to point out that science is, first and foremost, the study of what we know while religion is the acceptance of what we do not know. This is super-important because whenever I try to talk about something new and amazing in science I am met with people saying “Yeah, those scientists are always wrong. They never know what’s right.” That’s not the freaking point, you religious zealots. If the sky opened up tomorrow and the unquestionable voice of God spoke to each and every one of us saying “Elijah was the Messiah and Jesus just a prophet” What the f*&ck would you do? What would you do to your bibles and your pastors/priests? You’d shit yourselves is what you’d do.

But if, tomorrow, some Ukrainian kid discovers gravitons and can prove empirically how our TV screens has mass but the photons which show us the images do not, we’ll shrug it off because our TVs still work.  Right?

The point is: having unraveled the “genome” we are discovering new genetic mechanisms every day, the next frontier is the “biome” and it is exposing us to a world of understanding unrivalled except by magic. “Look upon my works, ye, mighty and despair.”

What a great time to be alive.

the lineage thus far

snake hoax

Back in the day (this term now refers to anytime before 2007. 2007 being when the internet was introduced to our phones and the world became a ridiculously smaller place than ever before.

It goes like this:

#1 everything before 10,000BCE = all people everywhere appear to have the same technology: stone axes, flint arrow tips, animal hides for clothing (we'll discuss gobekli tepe and randall carlson's theories later)

#2 starting 5,000 BCE the techno-arc begins it's rotation around the world introducing organized society and bureaucracy to humans in the middle east, south america and china. The first (historical) societies figure out how to organize for mass agriculture and complex societies setting the stage for everything we learned about in church and public school before the 21rst century.

#3 about 2,000 years ago the organized societies of the western world set up a template for organized society that will be scattered by the mongol hordes and Persian empire several centuries later.

#4 <1,000 years ago the devastation of the organized western world by the fall of the old empires leads to a new, more-free type of human movement and a new form of imperialism. The age of modern architecture, science and mathematics is born over the course of 5 centuries.

#5 ~100 years ago computational mathematics and mass communication begins to take hold and an almost modern socio-evolutionary change begins to occur.

#6 ~60 years ago: we mark the Earth with our energy consumption in the form of nuclear explosions and plastic consumption

#7 ~10 years ago: the age of data takes hold and we become what we are now. The luckiest people ever to be jobless and watching great TV and youtube videos.

This brings us to today. There is so much data available that anyone who WANTS to learn can make themselves an academic and anyone who WANTS to be lied to can accept the fake paradigm and consume the carbs. It was about 10 years ago that I was so upset with fake-giant-snake internet crap that I posted the following picture online with the f&^king disclaimer that it was fake.

No one seemed to notice.

Filling in the blanks.

This might be a tough post but here it goes.

My mother moved us to the country in 1984. She quickly took over the idea of raising and slaughtering all our own meat. Her (forgive the phrase) pet project was chickens and she quickly decided to cross-breed the traits she like into a predictable chicken that gave her the eggs and meat that she wanted. It took several years but she ended up with a unique breed of chickens that met her requirements. That's a story in itself, but now we must jump ahead a decade or so to when I started raising snakes and found that some were easier to feed and breed than others. I quickly decided to play with unique animals I found in nature to get something new.

Now, I grant you that the modern era is filled with anti-GMO types who deny they ever smoked pot while telling us that the illuminati uses chem-trails to make the minorities buy drugs from illegal immigrants but this isn't a sci-fi blog. It's a sci-life blog. And the reality is that I bred for recessive traits knowing full well that genetics work on a deeper level than phenotypes.

Need an example? Radiolab has a wonderful podcast about how the Russians bred foxes for calm behaviors and ended up with totally different coats. I could also show you how caloric intake directly affects when children reach puberty.  But no one cares about that. Even if I explain how trimming fruit tree tap roots get quicker fruit development. No one cares. We cling to insane ideas about evil GMO's poisoning us with genetically modified apples. FYI: all apples are genetically modified. All dogs, geese, pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, etc are "genetically modified". If you really want to hear a tail of GMO's that will make your heart break just listen to this. The point is, I decided to play God in the same way as countless scores of humans before me and it paid off.

I caught, bought and selectively bred various animals of a single species and got something yet-to-fore unseen. I am proud of the fact that I live in a time and place to record this. I have no idea what happened to my mother's chickens but I bet that someone is enjoying the eggs and meat that resulted from her work. To date, only one person has bought any of my snakes and I am a year or two away from calling an end to this project and starting something new. This website will serve as the documentation of my tangential achievement.

how to make a hypomelanistic ratsnake

I have replaced this old post with an "about this morph" page to cover this.