This past June I drove out to New Jersey with one firm goal in mind – record an interview with Robert Zappalorti, the founder and executive director of Herpetological Associates, Inc. It all came together; Bob is an interesting person to talk to, with decades of experiences, and a gracious host as well. The resulting recording became Episode 118: Pinesnakes, Bog Turtles and more with Bob Zappalorti. I met with Bob at the HA headquarters in Pemberton, New Jersey, and we had an hour-long recorded chat that I think is excellent. I’m sure some folks find it absurd, traveling 800 miles for an interview, but what better way to get a real feel for what Bob and his staff are…
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NOTE: “Hot Stove Herping’ is a phrase I coined years ago, for use in end-of-year posts on the old Field Herp Forum. I stole it from baseball; members of the ‘hot stove league’ huddle together during the cold winter months and talk baseball until spring and the game comes back. In a similar fashion, field herpers living in moderate climates hunker down amid the cold and snow and think of the year that passed, and dream of the coming spring. This herping trip took place in early April 2021 and spans three states – Louisiana, Mississippi, and a little bit of Alabama. Much of the trip was spent checking out trash piles, tin sites, and board lines across the three…
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The neonate tzabcan had crawled out of a cornfield, and was making its way to dense forest on the other side of the road when it was smashed flat against the pavement by a passing vehicle. We stopped to take a look at the unfortunate little rattlesnake; I took a photo voucher and a data point, and we went back to road-cruising. After passing that spot several times, Matt and Tim wanted out of the car, figuring that Mama Tzabcan, or siblings of the squashed snake, might still be over in that field. Their flashlights and headlamps disappeared from view as I whipped a u-turn and road-cruised solo for a while, maximizing our efforts. Five miles down the road I…
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The hard drive on my laptop bricked recently, and while going through the laborious process of restoring files from backup, I came across a folder labeled ‘10292006’ in my image archive. Opening the folder and looking at the images within, I remembered that October 29th, 2006 had been a good day, no, a great day in the field, a pit viper extravaganza at the very end of the field herping season in southern Illinois with my buddy Steve. These were the unedited, original archived images – my method is to save them off after tossing out the bad and the blurry, and to process copies via Photoshop. The file sizes from back then were little more than half a meg…
