Snake Road: A Field Guide to the Snakes of LaRue-Pine Hills (Shawnee Books) - Tapa blanda

Preface

To me, there has never been a clear line between spending time outside and looking for snakes. Some people go bird watching. Others seek out wildflowers or scenic views. But my favorite activity is snake watching. As a boy I always felt an affinity for snakes. Where I grew up good snake habitat was hard to find, however, and my opportunity to observe these interesting reptiles in the wild was limited to the occasional Common Gartersnake or Smooth Greensnake glimpsed in a state park or wooded fishing pond. So, while my interest in snakes never went away, there just wasn’t much opportunity for it to flourish. I was just a wannabe snake watcher, limited to browsing field guides and hoping for a rare sighting to leap, or maybe to slither, off the page.

Then, in 2014, I received an offer to accept a position in Morris Library at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The job sounded exciting, but I had a hard time working up any enthusiasm for the location. I wrongly imagined southern Illinois as a windswept cornfield, devoid of wildlife habitat. My mother soon grew tired of my grousing and started researching the area. We discovered to our surprise that southern Illinois offered a wide variety of outdoor nature activities. My hopes rose. Some of the farthest north cypress swamps were being restored, and the high annual rainfall and mild winter temperatures made for a diverse flora and fauna. The rocky bluffs were like miniature mountain ranges, and they could be explored without dealing with the thin air of high altitudes. Then we discovered the Forest Service’s Web page featuring a place called Snake Road, and my attitude changed from hopeful to intrigued.

Our first visit was in late summer. My parents and I drove slowly along the base of Pine Hills Bluff. The water level in the swamp was high on both sides of the road. We could only hope we weren’t going to get stuck in the mud, or even find ourselves up to the hubcaps in water. But were we actually going to see a snake? We had grave doubts. Then a long, black cylindrical creature zigzagged across the road. Our first snake. The first of many.

I know them now as North American Racers; back then they were just big impressive black mystery snakes. Snake Road lived up to its name. It was indeed a road with snakes. I couldn’t have been more pleased. The snakes were enormous, at least to my North Dakota eyes. They looked as thick as my wrist (granted, I have narrow wrists), easily over four feet (1.2 meters) long, shiny black, and alert. And that was all it took. We saw Northern Cottonmouths (so many Northern Cottonmouths), Gray Ratsnakes, Western Ribbonsnakes, and even the occasional Timber Rattlesnake. We learned that many snakes, especially Northern Cottonmouths, crossed from the bluff to the swamp and back again each spring and fall. In short order, my years became divided into two phases: “during the snake migration” and “preparing for the next snake migration.”

For a place with so much biodiversity, Snake Road is surprisingly accessible. Those who aren’t seasoned snake watchers should know that getting to where snakes can be seen is often a hassle. Mud, water, thorny vegetation, biting insects, and uneven terrain are typical impediments. Enthusiasts put up with all of that because there usually isn’t any other choice. But Snake Road is a maintained gravel road, which, despite the biting insects, takes much of the misery out of snake watching, while leaving the wonder intact.

When I first started visiting Snake Road, I couldn’t tell a Northern Cottonmouth from an Eastern Copperhead, so I got myself a field guide. It was less than helpful. This is not to criticize the field guide. But it wasn’t what someone like me needed. There were problems.

Problem 1. As a layperson, you can carefully match a photo from a field guide to a snake and still get the species identification wrong. It turns out—and this was a surprise to me when I first learned it—snakes of the same species can vary in appearance, especially color, and snakes of different species can look quite a bit alike. Oh, I was so sure I found a Scarletsnake (Cemophora coccinea) about five years back. Gorgeous little critter. My friends were envious. Too bad it was really a juvenile Eastern Milksnake. A fine snake, to be sure, but very much not a Scarletsnake. I discovered my error when I pulled up a photograph to brag to a biologist friend that yes, I had indeed seen a Scarletsnake at Snake Road, when no, I had not. The one small photograph my field guide contained seemed to match the animal I was looking at, and the range map indicated Scarletsnakes could be found here, but I still identified the species incorrectly. I don’t blame the field guide. The problem was with me. I just wasn’t the right audience for it. Specifically, I didn’t know enough about snakes to use it effectively. What I really needed was a guide designed for beginners. That guide was written for experts.

Problem 2. Field guides often expect you to capture and handle the snakes. For some species, the best way to identify them is to check markings on their bellies or count scales. It’s illegal to handle the wildlife at Snake Road, so that’s not an option. Moreover, even if handling were legal, there are three species of venomous snakes at Snake Road, and they make up well over half (64%) of the snakes I’ve observed there. If you’re not sure what kind of snake you’re looking at, you absolutely shouldn’t touch it. Getting bitten is the worst way to determine if a snake is venomous.

For me and my growing Snake Road habit, the available field guides weren’t the right tool for the job. I needed something to help me quickly identify, by sight alone, the snakes I was seeing in the field. Being an academic librarian, I enjoy digging into a good research problem. But there really wasn’t much out there about Snake Road apart from a couple of master’s theses, which were of course technical, and frankly above my head. Some investigation on the Web turned up an article published in the Bulletin of the Chicago Herpetological Society (Palis, 2016) that listed the snake species that had been observed at Snake Road. That article gave me the list I needed, but I still didn’t know how to identify the snakes on that list, which was my main goal. Luckily, shortly thereafter that I met the article’s author. We were both walking the same direction, so we chatted while we looked for snakes. Not knowing who I was talking to, I quoted his research back to him, which is a fine way to become acquainted with a researcher. We became friends. He taught me how to identify all of the snakes that live there, and it was during one of our walks that I had the idea to write this book. I decided to take everything I had learned over the past few years and create a guide to the snakes of Snake Road to help aspiring snake watchers—people who are fascinated by snakes and want to learn but might not know where to start—have a safe, ?productive, and educational experience. And here it is, the book I wish someone could have given me when I first discovered Snake Road. I hope it will help you and the ones you love discover the joys of snake watching. So good luck and may all of your days be snakey!