"Hello . . ."

"How brave are you?" I recognized the voice right away. 

"I'm brave enough," I thought, but not stupid. "What do you want?"

It was Keith Farmer, the herpetologist at the NC Aquarium at Ft. Fisher, and I knew better than to commit myself to any of his projects until I learned just exactly how it was going to affect me.

"I've got a unique opportunity for you," he offered. 

"Unique opportunity" in my lifetime has almost always meant the requesting party had run out of people to call, but I was game.

"Tell me more," I asked, but I had worked with Keith before and knew I was going to do it, whatever it was.

Keith explained the the spring drought had lowered the water levels of several streams that fed into Island Creek, a tributary of the NE Cape Fear River, and the meandering streams through the lowlands had been reduced to a series of isolated pools as the water levels declined.

"I'd like you to shoot some video in there before it dries up completely," he explained.

"The agkistrodons (a. piscivorous, cottonmouth water moccasins) are bunching up around the pools gorging themselves on the trapped fish, a perfect chance to get some good video," and I agreed to meet him a couple of days later, but at the 'frog pond' over in Holly Shelter.

Keith works on a variety of on-going projects, and one of them is the gopher frog rehab project * in which he and other herps (that's what they call each other) gather frog eggs in the spring, raise them through metamorphosis into adults, and release them near where they were taken.

After the release of about 40 young adults, we rode down and into the deep woods in a property that contains much of the lowlands that feed the headwaters of Island Creek. 

Long pants, long sleeve shirt, snake boots, hat, bug spray (100% DEET - I don't mess around), a couple of cameras. The others in the party are similar in their levels of protection. Jeff is a biologist with the State, Katy is an intern at the Aquarium, John is a volunteer.

Look at the top picture - it's Keith, as happy as happy can be, shorts, teeshirt, sneakers, snakestick. That's it. 

Even though his knees are shot his enthusiasm carries him along while everybody else lags, falls behind, enthusiasm ebbs, and in some cases mutiny.

On another of our outings, we were way, way down in the middle of Holly Shelter, had trudged around a creek, over burned-over fields back to the edge of even deeper woods.

I stopped in the shade of a large pine, and before long the rest of the party gathered there. Keith pushed deeper into the woods and called for us to come on.

I held my ground, and fortunately some else called out, "We're not going any further."

I'm sure he would have continued on across Holly Shelter, across Bear Garden, across Angola Bay.

By the end of this day, they had counted 53 individual agkistrodon piscivorous, one a. contortrix (copperhead), a couple of red watersnakes, a couple of black racers, bagged two snakes for the herp collection, a 'demo' cottonmouth, large with beautiful yellow and brown markings, for Keith to take with him to presentations, a black racer, and the bullfrog (dinner for some lucky snake).

Much to my surprise, cottonmouths are not like I remembered from my earlier experiences - quite dark, seeming to be charcoal black, but learned that the animals were mostly covered with dried mud, clay or silt and when wet and rinsed off were a dusty lemon yellow with bands of orange and brown.

The pools remaining held all the small fish from the once free-flowing stream; sunfish, pike, catfish, some frogs and crawfish, and the snakes were so over-fed and stuffed, even in the pools crowded with just-right sized fish, only one actually ate one during the filming, and a couple more made half-hearted attempts to feed, mouthing but not swallowing the prey fish.

There were plenty of snakes everywhere, sometimes in the pools, sometimes stretched out on logs, coiled up in a sunny spot, holed up under tree roots.

Rarely did they move away from us as we approached. 

Even when picked  up and held aloft at the end of a snakestick, relocated to a nearby limb for closer observation, or pulled out bodily from the protection of a tree stump - not once did any of these animals show aggressive behavior. A couple coiled up and 'gaped', held their mouths wide open, puffed up really big and excitedly waved the tips of their tails, but these are defensive behaviors - 'don't mess with me' and not even once did a single snake strike.

Jeff has got to have one of the more challenging jobs. 

He searches for habitat that's home to NC's rare and endangered amphibians and reptiles, and tries to get sympathetic landowners' support for the necessity to preserve and protect rather than seek out and destroy certain animals that are, frankly, not as loveable as a furry puppy, so to speak.

It's a tough sell in many cases, but often a little education goes a long way, and even if hearts are not opened wide, at least the first impulse isn't always to pick up a stick and beat 'em flat.

That may be the best one can hope.

Gopher Frog Rehabilitation Project

A rare and endangered species, the gopher frog lives in stump holes, and has lots of NC folks working to restore this nearly extinct species to its once limited distribution, now even more severely limited due to loss of habitat.

See more here.

** as the only non-naturalist, I was pleased to help out - bag o'snakes in one hand, cameras in the other.