Snake Stories Delight

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The New York Sun

Exclamations of delight were heard from children in the American Museum of Natural History as curator Darryl Frost displayed a nonvenomous gray-banded king snake from West Texas. The slithery friend was was part of the exhibition “Lizards & Snakes: Alive!” Mr. Frost, along with his co-curators, David Kizirian and Jack Conrad, hosted a children’s program on Sunday titled, “How I Became a Herpetologist.” Drawing on life stories, they conveyed how they became enamored with the wonder of the natural world.

Two panelists recalled their early experiences finding snakes. Mr. Frost told about a time when his family was traveling in the West and stopped at a park along the highway. He wandered a bit and spotted a Western Diamondback snake, about a foot long, coiled under a tree. When he alerted his parents, his mother said to his father, “Go take a look at it. It must be some worm.” His father went over to the tire station, got a tire iron and killed the rattlesnake.

“I remember thinking.‘Wow, I’m really sorry I said anything.I would have just left it alone,'” Mr. Frost said, adding that most people who get bit by snakes in America are trying to catch or kill them.

Mr. Kizirian told about the time when his family traveled from Rhode Island to Texas. When they arrived, he headed to a garden where he saw a Hognose snake, also known as a “hissing adder.” His grandfather came up from behind with a hoe and diced it into pieces.

Despite these inauspicious experiences, their interest remained undeterred.Later in life,Mr.Frost discovered the treasures within libraries. He recalled heading down to the Phoenix library reading “everything I could lay my hands on.” Mr. Kizirian agreed that reading was important; he said he had a copy of Raymond Ditmars’s “Reptiles of North America” that a high school biology teacher had given his father.

In high school, Mr. Frost discovered “road running,” which consisted of driving up and down a road at night. Cruising at 15 to 20 miles an hour, he would spot snakes on the road, then jump out and capture them. Given the wide variety of snakes in Arizona, “you could get twenty or thirty species in a night.”

But his father told him as a youngster: “I’m really worried you’re so obsessed by this. Are you sure that anyone’s ever going to pay you to do it?” He told the audience that one has to study subjects broader than just snakes (such as biology and ecology) if one is interested in pursuing a career as a herpetologist. “You have to have that broad interest to actualize your specific interest,”he said.

Mr. Kizirian told how herpetology ran in the family. His father was born and raised in South Philadelphia. In his youth, his father would hitchhike to South Jersey to collect Pine snakes and Bull snakes and keep them at home in cages.His father would order more exotic species through the mail from Ross Allen’s snake farm in Florida.”The postman would drop on the porch these bags that were moving and run away.” Once a six-foot Anaconda arrived in the mail. Mr. Kizirian said his grandmother had a memory of going downstairs to do the family laundry and finding the anaconda wrapping around the basement pipes.

Mr. Kizirian said his father later took that same snake to the Philadelphia Zoo, and traded it in for a highly venomous snake found in Central and South America. On a regular basis, he would go trade snakes there when he wanted to “try something new for awhile.”

Mr. Kizirian gave this sound advice to future herpetologists in the room: “Make sure that your cages are secure.”

gshapiro@nysun.com


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