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2005 Spring Field TripReports
Finds of Interest
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Unofficial Report, by Brad BirchfieldWasn't sure where to stick this war & peace epic piece of journalism. Hope it puts a smile on your face. Feel free to correct any inconsistensies. I already took out a part about seeing bigfoot flying a UFO... Well, I aint much of a herper, but I can write, so maybe I will give a shortened version of weekend events. Jeremy and I (Brad, for those of you that dont know) left the confines of western Arkansas at about noon on Friday. We met up with webmaster Kory at Ozark and after some creative packing, we were headed east. Staying on the interstate until Forest City, we arrived well ahead of our guestimate as none of us were familiar with the Crowleys Ridge area. As we left the city limits of Marianna, we see the alternate base camp location. since the original plan to camp at Storm Creek Lake had fallen through due to a biker rally in Helena, we had no idea what to expect as far as accomodations. As we pulled up into the driveway of the National Forest Service station, we knew we had the right place as we saw Glenn, aka copperheadman and Tyler aka son of copperheadman roaming about the yard of a house adjacent to the Forest service office. After a quick assesment of the facilities, we made the decision that wed be sleeping in the empty house that used to be a rangers residence or some such, instead of a tent. Right behind the house were a few buildings and piles of rubbish; not pretty to the average person, but to a herp enthusiast, it looked GREAT. Below that, there was a sizeable pond that looked like good nerodia habitat. So, with tongs and hooks in hand, a group consisting of Me, Jeremy, Kory, Glenn, Tory, Tyler and his little sis, Josh and Melissa headed off to start the festivities. Within 5 minutes of flipping debris, Jeremy pulled up on a sheet of metal and asked me to check under it. As he pulled up, I could make out the long, thin tail of a black racer. Showing extreme courage, or stupidity, I stuck my hands blindly under the metal and pulled out a handful of Coluber Constrictor, the first snake of the weekend. A quick look around the lake netted -0-, unless you counted finding 3 goose eggs on a nest and one mad mama goose. There were a couple of locals fishing on the pond bank. As me and Glenn approached the older of the two gentlemen, he said in a thick delta accent, Yall lookin for snakes? We replied yeah, seen any? He said, yeah, they is snakes all in this here pondwe saw a big ol rattlesnake down there on that bank, that thang was this big around (holding his hands to illustrate that this thing would have givin an anaconda a run for its money). We laughed it off and headed back to the house where Torry had a big pot of venison stew simmering, and boy did it smell GOOD. More folks showed up around dinner. Josh, who I met last year at Mt Magazine arrived with his wife Melissa. Josh had already started herping too, as he had a bag full of d.o.r.sthe coolest of which was a 3 ft mudsnake. Always thought they were cool. Then there was Kelly Irwin, herpetologist for the Game & Fish department, Keith Whalen, who works for the forest service as a biologist. Then our who came the farthest winner, Daniel. Daniel is from Iceland. As in, north Atlantic. As in, not even from this country. Even though he resides with his brother around Little Rock, he is originally from a land with no native herps that I can think of. Then we notice a couple of ladies pulling up in a mans truck. This turned out to be the dynamic duo of Cyndi and Erica. Now, we are all guilty of pre-judging people, and I admit I am guilty man. I thought to myselfoh, here is some curious ladies from little rock, probably never seen a rat snake, wanting to tag along and look at all the animals that us herpers will find or the like. I can imagine them hangin with us till about lunch tomorrow and theyll be DONE. Needless to say, I again learned: never judge a book by its cover. After dinner, we sat around outside and enjoyed conversation that eventually led to more entertaining conversation inside the house as the outside temps were in the 40s. Finally, at about 23:45, we all headed for our sleeping bags, with about half in the house, and the other half outside in their tents. At 0-dark thirty, I was awakened by one, Kelly Irwin. Apparently, I had placed my sleeping air mattress up against his cooler and there was something he just HAD to have at God knows what time it wasanyway, he retrieved his cooler and apologized, although the events are still hazy. Has anyone seen my wallet? Just kidding A bit later, I was awakened again with the smell of some scrambled eggs and sausage, again compliments of the talented Torry. Sometime in there, Ed Black arrived from the Texarkana area. I had seen a couple of Eds posts, so it was good to put a name with a face. At 0900 Kelly gave the word that the herping train was leaving, so we piled into our vehicles and headed south. Now, this was my first time to really be out and about in the delta. We were on top of Crowleys ridge. Crowleys Ridge is a huge rise in the surrounding landscape of hardwood forest. Now from the research I have read, scientists cant seem to agree if it was caused by wind blown dirt deposits, uplift of the New Madrid fault, or the channel of the Mississippi river changing course. In any case, it is a really beautiful areanot unlike the hardwood forests of the Ozarks and Ouachitas with one exception. You wont find a single native rock. As weird as that sounds, its practically true. The only natural cover youll find for herps in the forest is under logs or fallen trees. This makes looking for reptiles and amphibians easier and more challenging at the same time. I guess what I mean to say, is that if you can find something on the ground (tin, boards, logs) , chances are you will find an animal under it. The first site we hit turned out to be our most productive. It was a huge pile of sheet tin, remnants of a burned out house. The chimney still stood, and looked out of place in the otherwise pristine wilderness, but thats all that remained of the house. The anxious group split up into what was essentially three separate piles. The one I picked turned out to be the only one that didnt have some species of snake under it. Nothing new hereI am the bad news bears of Herpetology. The other groups turned up some impressive finds; one timber rattlesnake, about 3ft and some change, a huge hognose snake, and a milk snake. All this within 10 minutes of arriving. It was going to be a good weekend. After re-setting the tin to be more herp friendly, we played follow the leader to the next spot, a glade-like area below the dam of Bear Creek Lake. About that time, we headed back to the cabin for lunch. Lisa, Kellys wife joined our little cold blooded fraternity for the afternoon hunt. After lunch, we headed back down into the forest at another spot that netted a speckled king. On down the road from that, another old home site had good debris and refuse, but didnt yield too many animals. It did however yield the grand prize of the weekend. Kelly told us at the beginning he was especially interested in the midwestern worm snake (carphophis amoenus helenae). If you are not familiar with them, they are tiny snakes, rarely exceeding 10 in length that spend the bulk of their time under cover, like leaf litter or rotting logs, rocks, etc. Anyway, Kelly said for the first find of this species, a brand new copy of Trauths Amphibians & Reptiles of Arkansas awaited. Now, had I not been there, perhaps I would have been skeptical, but as Erica, Ed, and I were poking around on a wooded hillside, Cyndi was digging through the remnants of a rotting stump. Wormsnake! she exclaimed. We all ran up and sure enough, in her hand, and about 6 long, a tiny midwestern, as pretty as a picture. We all high fived and gave her the glory as it was rightly hers. Did I mention these ladies were good? I felt like I was playin a round of golf with Arnold Palmer in the 1970s. She put the little specimen in a bag and saved the surprise for later. More poking around revealed a rough green snake, and some frogs/toads, but not much else. As we were re-grouping at the vehicles. Cyndi came sauntering down the road grinnin like the Cheshire cat. She approached Kelly, who was talking with another Forest Service employee that was leading us to the different sites. Cyndi calmly took the bag and asked Kelly hey, I found something, but I am not sure what it is When she handed it to Kelly, the look on his face was priceless. We all submitted defeat to Cyndi, the snakemaster. Or would that be wormsnakemaster? As we were standing around oggling at Cyndis 6 wonder snakeKory had walked into the woods and discovered yet another abandoned home place. About half the group took off with him as the green light was given by the forest service guy about crossing a fence to get to the new found debris. Glenn and I were lagging behind, so when we finally climbed up the hill overlooking the property. It was a pretty little valley that had some old buildings and tin on the leftthen in the center a big pile of trash surrounded by plywood and boards sitting in the sun and then on the far right, the actual home(which was obviously empty) Glenn and I noticed that the search party that preceded us was working the site from left to the right. Glenn and I both saw the hot spot- the trash pile. I looked at Glenn. Glenn looked at me. Then we were both running like a couple of school kids to get to the pile first. We started flipping like madmen, and on my 2nd or 3rd board, I turned up a good sized timber rattlesnake. Har har har, finally, I get a breakeven if it wasnt the first timber found. About that same time, Cyndi had begun poking around the house and hollered RACER!, so several of the others and myself ran that way. We had this thing surrounded, at least 4 of us, and in typical racer fashion, it shot off and we never got it. In fact now that I mention itwe SAW plenty of racers, but didnt CAPTURE that manyso forgive me if I leave some racer sitings out. Besides, I am tryin to keep this short, ha ha ha! From the old homeplace, we headed down to a known gator location, the beaver pond. Did I mention my surprise with our fellow lady herpers? As we were getting our tongs & hooks organized, I walked up to survey this big cypress pond, and I see Erica and Cyndi, both sporting their waders, out there slogging through some muck with dip nets...trying to catch God knows what. I dont know bout you, but my arse aint getting in NO water where the word GATOR is close by. I salute them. Like the song by Dan Fogelburg says my life has been a poor attempt, to immitate the man, except in this case, it would be women. Love the attitude, ladies. I should note too, that Josh jumped right in, sans waders. He found a juvie cottonmouth on the other side of the road where a there was plenty of stinky, stagnant swamp water too. A couple of missed nerodia specimens later, we were on the road again, heading further south, almost to the Helena city limit. The next homesite was up above the road. It was an old barn looking structure that had fallen down eons ago. Underneath the tin of the roof, there was a pile of old newspapers that had somehow evaded most of the ravages of moisture and moth. The forest service guys wife, whose name escapes me, dug out an edition of some Memphis paper that was from 1969. The cover story was Clay Shaw Aquitted. For those that dont knowClay Shaw was a strange character that was implicated in a conspiracy that led to the assasination of JFK back in 1963. He was immortalized by Tommy Lee Jones in the 90s movie JFK by Oliver Stone. I thought that was cool. While flipping some more debris, Kory and Daniel turned up another midwestern worm snake and another black racer that was just about to shed. By this time, we were all getting hungry, so we turned our caravan homeward. We hit a couple more spots but none were very productive. Kelly did flip over a piece of driftwood to reveal a hatchling broadbanded water snake. It was pretty neat, albeit small, as its markings looked very similar to the cottonmouth Josh had found back in the swamp. . Arriving back home, we were welcomed by the smell of some fine chuck mock tender steaks(did I mention I was a butcher for 8 yrs?), prepared with love by Torry and Melissa. At first I thought Melissa had started on a good drunk because of the red glow on her face, but apparently, someone fell asleep in the sun as Torry was reading some Harry Potter to the kiddos. I would have done the same, Melissa. The steak and taters dinner was outstanding as expected, and just about dark, some of us decided to go road cruising, despite the chilly temps. A hand to the pavement told me that it was plenty warm for a serpent to seek out the blacktop. Into the Tahoe, we go. It was Jeremy, Kory, Daniel, Cyndi and Erica with me rounding out the crew in the cargo area of the Tahoe. Now I know how my dog feels. I could go on about every minute detail of our excursion, but aside from learning Jeremy was 32 years old, there wasnt any life changing events. But there was this one thing worth notingKory and Daniel decided to climb down this concrete wall that bordered a spillway for Bear Creek lake. The spillway was a concrete chute, about 50ft wide and 150ft long down a fairly gentle grade that ended up in a big pond of skanky water at the bottom. As Jeremy, Cyndi, Erica, and myself were walking paralell with them on solid groundwe noticed Korys head lamp was moving ever so smoothly down the slope towards the big pool. About the time Kory yelled guys, I cant stop we realized his weight, coupled with the algae that covered the concrete coupled with gravity made for one disaster waiting to happen. I told Cyndi a dollar says he wipes out.. and I guess I owe her one, because he finally caught the lip of an intersection of one of the concrete panels and got himself stopped. It was almost a very funny event. Nice to know you have friends like us, huh Kory? Back at the house, we were all pretty tired from the days events, so the campfire conversation (that had to be moved indoors because it was too cold and we didnt have a campfire) moved indoors. The second night, in addition to Ed (who arrived on Saturday morning), Erica and Cyndi decided to take advantage of the central heat and air like the rest of us. Sunday morning, Kory took over the breakfast duties and fried up some kielbasa and eggs for the crew. Around 0900, we were out the gate for some more herping, but tribe Chapman headed back towards Flippin. This morning was a little too cool, but we gave it our best effort, turning up a few ground skinks and Kory ran across a racer and another speckled king. I found a dead dog. Not pretty. The last stop before heading home was Bear Creek lake. There, we skimmed the shorelines in hopes of finding assorted nerodia or a cottonmouth. We didnt find those, but Kory did find another prize. An amphiuma. Now, being a snake guyI had never heard of the thingit looks like a 2 foot fresh water eel or somethinglike a mudpuppy on steroidsnot very pretty. But apparently they are fairly common in the area and it was lucky to find/capture this specimen foraging in shallow water. Kelly actually found another one, but in the process of trying to get it in a net, it fell back to the lake where it remains. Cyndi also found a stinkpot turtle. With that, the herping finally ended and we headed back home for our goodbyes. I can only speak for myself, but I know other folks feel the same way. I cannot think of anything (well, maybe a live mudsnake) that would have made the weekend better. The people, the location, the weather, the foodit was all way beyond my expectations. I really enjoyed making new aquaintences that are also interested in these magnificent animals. I count myself very lucky to have stumbled upon you all. And I guess the biggest thanks to Kory, for throwing this Snakes of Arkansas together. Without thatId still be road cruising in the Ozarks by myself wishing I knew someone that liked snakes! I guess thats about itsee you next fall! Brad
Events portrayed in the above diatribe may or may not have occurred. The author makes no guarantee, expressed or implied to the validity of the above mentioned events. The only thing you can prove is that Jeremy is 32. |
