How to Write an Article for a Herp Society Newsletter Chorus 23, no. 8 (Oct. 2007)

I don’t envy Bob’s job. Getting people to write articles for herpetological society newsletters is a difficult if not impossible task, as I know all too well. During my two years editing The Ontario Herpetological Society News (from 1999 to 2001), I had to beg, plead and cajole people to write articles for me. Of the articles I did get, more than a few were so badly written that I had to edit them heavily. Rewriting the articles sentence by sentence did not always go over well with some of the authors, who objected to every change I made to their prose. Even if it was awful. Especially, it seemed, if it was awful.

But problems with grammar and spelling weren’t the only issues. In many cases the articles were written well enough, but were in a convoluted and overwrought style; others didn’t seem to have much of a point. And some were just too darn long.

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The Seven Rules of Raising Baby Garter Snakes Chorus 22, no. 5 (May 2006)

Few people are crazy enough to breed garter snakes and raise the babies, but more than a few of us have unexpectedly been handed the task of raising a large number of baby garter snakes. We may, for example, have been handed a “rescued” garter snake that turns out to be very, very pregnant, which then surprises you one day with dozens of her offspring slithering around her cage.

Oh great, you think. Now what? Suddenly you’re faced with having to look after a whole bunch of little snakes. The sheer number of them can make that a very intimidating situation. And raising baby garter snakes isn’t the same as raising a litter or two of corn snakes. Garter snakes don’t eat mice, you think, and they’re too small for pinkies anyway — how are you going to feed them all?

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Raising Baby Garter Snakes: Some Personal Observations The Garter Snake, April 2005

The herpetocultural literature on the raising of young garter snakes is surprisingly scant. Apart from some issues of diet, the care of adult garter snakes is little different from that of any other medium-sized North American colubrid. Books on the subject either deal with neonate garter snake care in very general terms, or treat it as similar to that of other snakes. But this is not the case. There are some definite differences in the care of newborn garter snakes, especially in terms of feeding and housing. As a result, when my garter snakes started breeding in the spring of 2001, I was not prepared for some of the surprises their offspring had in store for me.

What I propose to do in this article is to share what I’ve learned from raising a few litters1 of garter snakes, plus a few neonates that I did not breed, but acquired when they were very young. This is by no means scientific or definitive, but anecdotal. It’s merely what I’ve observed. If your observations differ, by all means share them: at this point, we need as many observations as we can get, if we’re to understand better how to look after our charges.

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St. John’s Reptiles of the Northwest Ark’Type, Aug.-Sept.-Oct. 2003

Reptiles of the Northwest
by Alan St. John
Lone Pine, 2002. Softcover, 272 pp. ISBN 1-55105-349-7

Regional field guides generally beat the Audubon or Peterson guides hands-down when it comes to descriptions of local ranges, subspecies, and habitat. Some guides provide only limited information in the interest of keeping their size down, sacrificing their usefulness as a reference for their pocketability (e.g. MacCullough’s ROM Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of Ontario). Other guides provide authoritative information in rich, comprehensive quantities, but in a thick book that is kind of hard to carry with you — they’re more textbooks than field guides (e.g. Harding’s Amphibians and Reptiles of the Great Lakes Region or Werler and Dixon’s Texas Snakes). Both methods produce good field guides; it’s just a matter of which kind of guide you need: pocketable or definitive.

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The ROM Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of Ontario The OHS News 92 (July 2002)

The ROM Field Guide to Amphibians and Reptiles of Ontario
by Ross D. MacCullough
McClelland & Stewart, 2002. Softcover, 168 pp. ISBN 0-7710-7651-7

Ontarians have not had a field guide to their reptiles and amphibians for some time, at least not since Bob Johnson’s Familiar Reptiles and Amphibians of Ontario (1989). Whereas Johnson’s little book was illustrated with black-and-white sketches that may or may not have resembled the actual animal in question, this new pocket guide is a showcase for excellent herp photography, giving each species native to Ontario three full-colour photographs on the facing page of each written description.

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Pelee Island Field Trip Report The OHS News 92 (July 2002)

On Victoria Day weekend, 23 crazy herpers from Ontario, Quebec and Michigan travelled to Pelee Island to stay at the Wilds of Pelee Island Outdoor Centre for Conservation, where they would help restore habitat and build hibernation and nesting sites for endangered reptiles and amphibians, and perhaps to catch a glance of the elusive Blue Racer (Coluber constrictor foxii). In spite of forecasts calling for rain throughout the weekend and rather cold temperatures, we did pretty well. While it was quite chilly, the weather obliged us by raining only at night (though this was a problem for some of us with less than optimal tents).

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A Tale of Two Snakes Chorus 18, no. 10 (Dec. 2001)

Two of the snakes we have cared for would have interesting stories to tell. They can’t talk, of course, so I’ll tell their stories for them. Both were snakes that came in from the wild under extraordinary circumstances. It’s amazing that either of them managed to survive. One we have kept, one we have released: when you read their stories, you’ll understand why.

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Questions About Ribbon Snakes in Captivity Chorus 18, no. 8 (Oct. 2001)

When I first had the idea to write a short article about keeping ribbon snakes in captivity, my plan was to explain why ribbon snakes were a poor “beginner” snake in spite of their low price at pet stores. I would have based that argument on the herpetocultural literature on ribbon snakes and on our own experience with our single Western Ribbon Snake, which to date has made for a less than satisfactory captive. But things have gotten a bit more complicated since then, and now I’m left with more questions about ribbon snakes than answers. Which is probably a good thing.

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Some Notes on Wandering Garter Snakes The OHS News 89 (Sept. 2001)

Wandering Garter Snakes (Thamnophis elegans vagrans) will never win any ophidian beauty contests. They are essentially gray or grayish-brown snakes with a black checkered pattern and three cream-coloured stripes (occasionally the side stripes are not visible). To hobbyists enamoured of tricoloured milk snakes or mountain kingsnakes, they must seem quite drab, though their appearance might appeal to those of us who appreciate subtler, more subdued patterns (such as Baird’s Rat Snakes or Gopher Snakes). But whatever you think of their appearance, these are nevertheless very interesting snakes. They are reckoned as being one of the best (if not the best) garter snakes to keep in captivity, and they are probably the least garter-like garter snake north of Mexico.

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Spotting the Spotted Turtle Chorus 18, no. 5 (May 2001)

On the morning of April 13, 2001, six OARA members departed Ottawa for an undisclosed location in southwestern Ontario. They were Andrew Mott, Brian Oehring, Jeremy Pallas, Marc St. Pierre, Florence Lehmann and myself, crammed with our gear into a rented minivan for a long road trip. Once there, we would join Steve Marks, Mike Elioff, Dave Smith, Stewart Stick and Drew and Killian Hamilton to search for the Spotted Turtle (Clemmys guttata). We were participants in a scientific study (under permit) to see whether this species was found at the site in question. While a substantial number of turtles had been present a quarter century ago, more recent surveys had found few, if any. Last year, the first year of our survey, only two turtles had been found: an old female last spring and a male in June. We didn’t know if a viable breeding colony was present — the male was found a kilometre from the female’s site — but we were nonetheless hopeful.

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Domestic Mice as Food for Butler’s Garter Snakes The OHS News 88 (March 2001)

Nowhere in the recent herpetological or herpetocultural literature regarding Butler’s Garter Snakes, Thamnophis butleri, are rodents referred to as a potential food source, either in captivity or in the wild.1 Field studies have confirmed that earthworms make up the overwhelming proportion of a Butler’s Garter Snake’s diet, followed by leeches; laboratory studies have shown that they also react to toads, small frogs, red-backed salamanders and small fish (Catling and Freedman 1980, Rossman, Ford and Seigel 1996).

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Werler and Dixon’s Texas Snakes The OHS News 87 (Dec. 2000)

Texas Snakes: Identification, Distribution and Natural History
by John E. Werler and James R. Dixon
University of Texas Press, 2000. Hardcover, xv + 437 pp. + plates.
ISBN 0-292-79130-5

Work began on this book twenty years ago, the authors inform us in the preface. Even taking into account the fact that for most of that period, the authors had other responsibilities and could not have worked full-time on this project, that seems an awfully long time to spend on a single work. Looking at the book, though, it is easy to see why. It has all the usual sections you would expect from such a guide: a general introduction, an identification key, a note on venom, an extensive bibliography and, of course, species and subspecies accounts. But those accounts have a level of detail and thoroughness that are unmatched by any other guide, including Tennant’s Field Guide to Texas Snakes, and each gives an in-depth survey of the scientific knowledge of the snake in question. With so much attention paid to each of Texas’s 109 species and subspecies, no wonder it took so long.

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Holman’s Fossil Snakes of North America The OHS News 87 (Dec. 2000)

Fossil Snakes of North America: Origin, Evolution, Distribution, Paleoecology
by J. Alan Holman
Indiana University Press, 2000. Hardcover, xi + 357 pp. ISBN 0-253-33721-6

The study of fossil snakes is not nearly as accessible as you might expect. It’s highly specialized work that doesn’t excite the popular imagination nearly as much as a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. The following quotation from Fossil Snakes of North America is instructive:

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How Volunteer Organizations Work — And Why They Don’t The OHS News 87 (Dec. 2000)

I’ve been volunteering my time for various organizations since I was sixteen. (That was silly of me, I know.) I’ve held executive positions on volunteer boards for about as long. By the time I was twenty I was cynical enough about it that I composed a little document called Crowe’s Laws of Meetings, which distilled all the wisdom I purported to have gleaned from several years of witnessing the shenanigans that took place at board meetings. “All meetings start fifteen minutes late”, “It’s easier to criticize someone else’s work than do your own — and at a meeting it’s hard to tell the difference”, and so forth. I lost the document years ago and I wish I hadn’t.

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Understanding Garter Snakes Through Their Diets Chorus 17, no. 8 (Oct. 2000)

Garter snakes are known for eating a variety of endothermic prey, such as amphibians (especially frogs and toads), fish, earthworms, and even slugs and leeches. But it’s more complicated than that. Several garter snake species specialize on only a few of these prey items and refuse the others; other species will eat all of these and more. For example, some people may not know that a few species will eat small mammals or birds, which makes it possible to feed them mice in captivity. Not only that, but the Western Terrestrial Garter Snake (Thamnophis elegans) has an exceptionally broad range of prey preferences: it also likes to eat reptiles, including snakes (so they must be kept separately in captivity). Then there are the exceptions, like the Mexican Alpine Blotched Garter Snake (Thamnophis scalaris), which is known only to eat lizards. So it’s a mistake to assume that all garters eat the same kind of food. It’s important to pay close attention to what garters eat, especially if you’re thinking about keeping one in captivity. What I will do in this article is shed a little light on the complexity and variation in garter snakes’ diets, both in the wild and in captivity.

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The Art of War on the Online Forums The OHS News 86 (Sept. 2000)

Everyone who has spent any time on the kingsnake.com forum has their own horror stories to tell. Here are some of mine.

I once got involved in a verbal fracas that started when someone asked what kind of snake it was that he just caught, which turned out to be a scarlet snake (Cemophora coccinea). Some of us argued that, since scarlet snakes are obscenely difficult to keep, it should be released at once; but others thought there was nothing wrong with keeping it, and gave a grand total of two sentences’ worth of care advice. The ensuing fight went on long after the person who found the snake announced that he had already released it.

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Two New Corn Snake Manuals The OHS News 85 (Spring 2000)

The Corn Snake Manual
by Bill Love and Kathy Love
Advanced Vivarium Systems, 2000. Paperback, 128 pp. ISBN 1-88277054-4

Corn Snakes
by R. D. Bartlett and Patricia Bartlett
Barron’s, 1999. Paperback, 48 pp. ISBN 0-7641-1120-5

Corn snakes, for snakes that are comparatively easy to keep — corn snakes are to herpetoculture what boiling water is to cooking: screw that up and you probably shouldn’t try anything else — are a lot more complicated than they used to be. In 1991, Michael J. McEachern’s Color Guide to Corn Snakes described a handful of single- and double-recessive mutations and a couple of distinctive locality morphs. Now there are more morphs than I myself can keep track of, and it’s kind of hard to figure out what they all are.

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Tennant and Bartlett’s Snakes of North America The OHS News 84 (Winter 2000)

Snakes of North America: Eastern and Central Regions
by Alan Tennant and R. D. Bartlett
Gulf, 2000. Paperback, xxv + 588 pp. ISBN 0-87719-307-X

Snakes of North America: Western Region
by R. D. Bartlett and Alan Tennant
Gulf, 2000. Paperback, xvi + 312 pp. ISBN 0-87719-312-6

Snake nuts will want to know about these books. If, like me, they are particularly fond of North American snakes, they may already own copies of the three field guides already published by Gulf: A Field Guide to Snakes of Florida and A Field Guide to Texas Snakes (the latter already in its second edition), both by Alan Tennant, and A Field Guide to Snakes of California by Philip Brown. Brown’s guide is not as satisfying as the two by Tennant, which provide a heady amount of information on each subspecies, more than could be found in any other field guide. And while Texas and Florida have a lot of snakes between the two of them, I couldn’t help but want even more — information on the snakes that didn’t live in either state.

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Mattison’s Keeping and Breeding Snakes The OHS News 83 (Fall 1999)

Keeping and Breeding Snakes
by Chris Mattison
Blandford, 1999. Hardcover, 224 pp. ISBN 0-7137-2709-8

The first edition of Chris Mattison’s Keeping and Breeding Snakes appeared in 1988. This second, “fully revised” edition is no mere updating of an earlier work; it is essentially an entirely new book. Its emphases have changed and its text — especially its species accounts — has been rewritten. Gone are the tables with breeding information, and the section on keeping venomous snakes has been reduced to almost an afterthought. The new photographs are nothing less than spectacular, in far more vivid colour than in previous Blandford offerings. In all, the package is quite attractive.

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