Rattlesnake Roundups...

One of the unfortunate truths to face as a nature lover, and a herper, is that every year hundreds of snakes will be barbarically butchered each year in the southern US.  I am not even referring to the woefully high road mortality, or the persecution by hunters and landowners.  Each year, hundreds of snakes are captured by spraying gasoline down burrows that many other animals use, and then all slaughtered in front of crowds who love to cheer on the blood and gore.  These roundups typically occur in Texas, the Sweetwater Jaycees Annual Rattlesnake Roundup being the most well known, but also occur in parts of the SE US.

I won't provide them web traffic by leading your to pictures of the event.  I also won't ever drink a Coors beer again as they are one of the events biggest sponsors.  Instead I will show a couple pictures of healthy western diamondback rattlesnakes that were not found by gassing burrows, and I will highlight how a terrible thing can be transformed for the good.

One of the countries other biggest yearly roundups occurred in Claxton, Georgia.  Concerned individuals were able to convince the organizers of the event to change the roundup from an event focused on persecution and slaughter to a celebration of all wildlife.  This year, the "45th" Annual Claxton Rattlesnake and Wildlife Festival was held, although really the first under this new name.  They were able to draw much more vendors, including zoos, conservation organizations who were all very supportive of the new direction of the event.  The event still drew 15000 visitors over two days and was still a success.

Check out this article on the Orienne Society's website, a wonderful conservation society that focuses on reptiles and amphibians.

Will the Sweetwater Roundup ever go the way of the dodo?  Hard to tell at this point, but if smaller roundups can show they are successful even after a change in "format" maybe there will be hope for the future.

Spring Silliness

I haven't been able to post much lately due to a variety of reasons.  On of the biggest reasons has been our unseasonably warm weather and the need to spend time in the field.  Today is actually more indicative of "spring", as it is cool in the low 60s and cloudy.  Really not bad for March.  I am going to try and get some stuff up soon, but here is a quick teaser...

Spring?

Posting from the road.

Early spring. Check
Temps in the 60 s.  Check
Full tank of gas, full cooler of caffeine, two awesome dogs. Check, check check
Rain?  Promising forecast...

Willing to drive all over the state chasing rain and the calls of breeding frogs?

Wouldn't have it any other way.

Black Keys

Hells yeah....

2nd Ohio Amphibian Research and Conservation Conference

If you have any interest in herps, biology or just enjoy the outdoors, I suggest you check out the 2nd Ohio Amphibian Research and Conservation Conference.  Ohio DNR has been putting on reptile and amphibian conferences every two years now for almost a decade.  They alternate the focus of each conference between reptiles and amphibians, so each topic is approached every four years.  This years event is March 20, 2012 at the ODOT Hilltop Conference Center in Columbus, Ohio. The keynote speaker is Dr. Tyrone Hayes, an amphibian ecologist from UC Berkeley, who will be speaking about amphibian declines.

Western Chorus Frog found breeding on March 11, 2006

I have made almost all of these conferences now and they are always full of top notch speakers, fascinating information relevant to Ohio reptiles and amphibians and provide a great opportunity to get together with a group of like minded individuals.  The past few conferences have probably attracted 100+ people in attendance from all walks of life and level of interest.  These conferences are pretty laid back, and provide a wonderful venue to celebrate herps and bring in the new field season.

Tiger Salamander roadcruised on March 15, 2008

The conferences are centrally located in Columbus Ohio.  You can obtain more information about registration (late now), location and scheduled speakers here.  Another selling point is that the past 2 or even 3 conferences I have attended were blessed with rain.  I have been able to get some early spring amphibian migrations in on almost every occasion!

Smallmouth Salamander roadcruised on March 13, 2010

New Turtle Craft!

My holiday wishes came true and I found myself the lucky owner of a new "turtling" (fishing) kayak this year.  I had spoken about my dream boat before, the Jackson Kayak Coosa, and I can't wait to really get this thing out on the water...

It's a decent sized craft, coming in at 11'3" and weighs a bit under 70 lbs.

Getting her unwrapped was a breeze, and I quickly had her outfitted for a trip!

Notice the fishing pole and snake hook fitting nicely.

But now the question became how to store it??  I am not the handiest of fellows, but I recruited my buddy Rob to help figure something out.  Rob recently got a hard top Jeep Wrangler and had rigged a pully system for the hard top in his garage.  Turns out it broke and fell, but he assured me he wouldn't make the same mistake twice.  I figured he had more experience than I, and maybe he learned a thing or two from his earlier transgressions...

A couple stops at Home Depot, Lowes, the neighborhood ACE hardware, (and then Home Depot and Lowes again) and we were in business.  The boat doesn't weigh a ton, but Molly wasn't thrilled about the idea of it hanging over the front of her car, especially with twiddle dee and twiddle dum suspending it.  We opted for the fairly high load bearing pulleys, rope, etc.  We made sure to try and and eliminate any "weak" points in the system.  After buying everything, I am sure it won't fall due to equipment failure.  Now, knot failure is a whole other issue.

Most of our supplies, just after getting started.  

We rocked out to some Black Keys as we fashioned the webbing around craft.  We used heavy duty caribiners to connect the webbing to the rope, with a section of rope to keep the straps tight in the middle.

Here we are getting ready for the first test pull.  We quickly fashion rope loops around the rafters just for the test run, and ended up with heavy duty chains, as eventually trading up for climping rope too.

Good thing we checked first too.  The initial pulleys didn't have a swivel feature, and the "track" for the rope was too shallow.  The rope kept coming off and getting wedged.  New pulleys, new rope, and our chains now in place...

To keep the chains from sliding, we bolted them in place in the beam.

Another test run later, the craft pulled up and down fairly easily, with everything staying smooth.

I read you should hand your kayaks upside down to prevent warping.  We lowered it down, figured out how to tie it off on the wall, and we were in business!

It isn't the prettiest, or easiest tie, but it is redundant and it works.   We used a heavy duty loop and hook initially.  The loop is bolted into the beam, and when you pull the hook and knot down it easily hooks in.  Makes it pretty simple for one person to do.  We could only find a small cleat, and probably should have gotten a bigger dock cleat from a boating supply store. Since this was kinda the backup, we opted to just loop a knot around the cleat we had.  What little excess rope there is is looped above.

And there she is, all hoisted up!

Many thanks to Rob for all of his help!  Now I just need to come up with a creative herping name, and get her in the water!  Spring and the rivers are just around the corner...

Any name suggestions for a river worthy turtle craft??

BH

By the way, we hung her Jan 9th, and if any of you were wondering she hasn't crashed down on Molly's car yet!

Roadcruising Riffs 15

The Black Keys are a couple of home grown Buckeye Herps boys from Akron.  Their song, Little Black Submarines, is by far my favorite off their new record and made for some great listening on my trip last week.

You are missing out if you haven't heard this.

I am really excited to see them perform this tune live in a couple of weeks.

Rock on and Happy Herping!

BH