In January of 2013, Patti and I were in Amazonian Peru with about 15 other herpers. We had spent five days on Project Amazon’s Madre Selva Biological Preserve on the Rio Orosa, and had just moved back upriver to their Santa Cruz Forest Preserve.

Since our last visit, a lazy creek I remember as barely flowing had been dammed and had flowed sufficiently to form a several acre pond in a low-lying clearcut before trickling over the dam to reenter the dense secondary forest. The pond, now two years old, had provided new habitat for spectacled caiman, fish, and in banana trees along the banks, for Bob; for many Bobs, in fact.



Bob, a treefrog, had been named by our gang for his call, “Bob”—not Robert, not Bobby, just plain old Bob, spoken in a guttural croak. Big, angular, with actions and reactions relatively slow, Bob and his brethren sat, usually one to a banana tree, on the leaf stems about waist to head high. Bob was forest green dorsally, grayish to buff ventrally, and laterally had a jagged line of dark rimmed light spots separating the dorsal and ventral colors.

Bob was (and is) a giant monkey frog, Phyllomedusa bicolor. Among the largest of his genus Bob was about 4 ½ inches svl (snout-vent length), had huge parotoid glands and when he moved he as often moved in a deliberate hand over hand fashion as by jumping.

Every night at dusk, Bob (all the Bobs, in fact) emerged from the axil(s) of the banana tree(s) to sit boldly on the stem(s) and call loudly into the night. That this seemingly harsh and unwaveringly repetitious call has been successful in bringing females to the various calling sites was amply displayed by the vast number of tadpoles in all stages of development that swam in the shallows of the pond.

The Bobs it seems, and the Bobettes, have found new homes. Long live them all!

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Most hobbyists have heard about Okeetee and Miami Corn Snakes, Pantherophis guttatus guttatus, but in Florida there are a few other locales that are home to rather distinctive corn snakes.

Like “Okeetee,” actually an area much greater than just the hunt club from which the name was taken, and Miami (again a larger area), Palm Beach and the Everglades are homes to corn snakes that, although somewhat variable, are often identifiable by appearance to locale.

Let’s take a look at the Everglades phase, a corn snake that is often found right in mangrove habitat at the southernmost tip of the Florida mainland.

Usually only 2 ½ to 3 feet in length, the dorsum bears bright red saddles that are heavily outlined in black and separated by a pretty beige ground color. The sides, predominantly yellow-buff to beige, bear small black spots that may or may not have a red center. The belly is typically “corn snake checkered” but often has a hazy appearance.

Although not uncommon, this is a corn snake phase that is rather seldom seen. But if you’re all the way down in Miami-Dade County looking for the coveted maroon on pearl gray corns there, you might as well continue southward to Monroe County and find yourself a pretty Everglades phase.

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Gordy Johnston and I began our Massachusetts-to-Florida jaunts in the mid-1950s. Like many other herpers who we knew, our principal interest was in the constricting snakes (the lampropeltine species), but we were also very fond of the big, bellicose somber, green water snakes that were to be found foraging and basking in and along the borrow canal* that paralleled the old Tamiami Trail. Although the green water snakes were the dominant species, Florida water snakes and eastern mud snakes were also commonly encountered.

The term “green” can impart many visions, often erroneous, to those of us familiar with the vivid greens of green snakes and green lizards. However, when the term “green” is applied to Nerodia floridana, there are times when one must actually question the validity of the common name.

Young green water snakes are green: dingy olive green, but green. With growth this color may darken until on some aged examples the ground color is such a dark blackish-green that you must use your imagination to perceive the green at all. Over the years these dark colors are those I had come to associate with this species. Despite the fact that the field guides stated that green water snakes may also be brownish, that was a color I was not yet familiar with.

It was researcher Walt Meshaka who first mentioned the finding of brownish green water snakes in southern Florida to me. And, he continued, he had seen red ones also.

Red? A green water snake clad in scales of red? That thought had never entered my mind. But it was because of that conversation that my search for a red green water snake began and continued until a few years ago when, lo!, on a herping trip to the southern peninsula I found both brownish examples and one red one as well. Success was sweet!

And I can unequivocally state that the finding of the latter has done much to change my perception of the Florida green water snake. Green can be beautiful, especially when it is red.



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Dusk had long fallen, bats were erratically flitting low over the water, and a moonless night was already enveloping the little lake in Springfield, Massachusetts, where I had been harassing a population of eastern painted turtles for several hours. I had decided it was time to head home for a late supper. Docking and securing the old wooden rowboat I was using required the use of a flashlight, its batteries so used that the beam hardly showed.

As the boat nudged the dock and I grabbed the tie-rope I glanced down into the shallow water just in time to see a smoothly oval “stone” scuttling across the plant-free bottom. And then the flashlight dieWhat had I seen?

d.

I grabbed my bike and quickly rode the half mile home, hoping as I rode that I had a couple of replacement batteries and that I wouldn’t have to delay my return to the pond for supper. I lucked out. Supper was waiting, a set of new batteries was found, and a few minutes later I was on my way back to the lake.

Almost sooner than it takes to tell this tale I was back on the dock, sweeping the sandy lake bottom with my flashlight beam. Within seconds I had locked onto one of the moving stones. Little and black, I could now see a pointed nose on one end and a stubby tail on the other.



Between these were the little black legs that propelled the creature in bursts of speed between which it foraged agilely and avidly on the bottom. A soggy piece of bread discarded by a fisherman, a broken half of worm, a portion of a dead shiner—as I watched, all proved grist for the mill of this little turtle—a common musk turtle, Sternotherus odoratus, aka the Stinkpot.



I was soon soaked to the skin but before returning home that night I had seen and inspected more than half dozen. It was an educational introduction to a species I had never even imagined dwelt in our area.

I awakened to a hard March rain heralded by blustery but warm southern breezes. The snow that had fallen the previous day had melted and the rain had already made noticeable inroads on the crusted layer that lay beneath. Would this rainy night, I wondered, be the night — the night the spotted salamanders emerged from brumation and accessed their breeding ponds?



A quick check of the proposed forecast showed we were experiencing a late winter warm front, slow moving, almost stalled, and replete with rain. And that rain was supposed to fall all day, terminating in the early evening. The next day would probably be cold again.



At dusk, the rain was still falling as Patti and I carefully made our way, across ground still slippery with icy patches, to a well-known spotted salamander breeding pond.

As we neared the pond, our lights illuminated the wriggling form of a salamander as it emerged from cover in the woodland and approached the icy rim. It then crossed the ice to enter the open water beyond. A single spring peeper began calling. Then another salamander was seen, and another.



Although the rain was now nearly stopped and the night was cooling, that night definitely was the night. Despite the calendar date, the spotted salamanders had declared that spring was officially here.

The road surface was one hundred twenty six degrees. That wasn’t too surprising, for although it was the already 3 weeks into October, it had been sunny all day and, after all, this was north central Florida.

What did surprise Mike Manfredi and me more than a little was the fact that a big, gravid, female Canebrake Rattlesnake, Crotalus horridus atricaudatus (today these are often referred to as Timber Rattlesnakes with the subspecies no longer being recognized), was quietly lying stretched on the blistering hot pavement…and that two people in a car parked on the opposite side of road were watching her intently.



As I stopped by the idling snake, I looked more closely at the folks in the parked car and saw that the driver had a handgun aimed at the big rattler. Mike and I spoke, informing them that we would remove the snake and proceeded, to their obvious dismay, to do just that. Mike stayed by the snake while I pulled the car from the road and took a snakehook and a large heavy-duty locking trashcan from the car. Laying the trashcan on its side directly in front of the snake, I gave her a gentle prod on the tail and grinned happily at the people in the car (who had now taken the gun from view and were staring at Mike and me in unfettered incredulity) as she moved slowly into the shady receptacle.

The can was upturned, lidded, and as we prepared to leave, the watchers inquired about the pending fate of the rattler. We explained that she would be photographed and then released on the forest property that surrounded us. I thanked the driver for not shooting the snake and was told he, not wanting to put a hole in the pavement, would have shot her had she moved onto the shoulder.

Lucky snake. Lucky us.

I looked apprehensively at the cave entrance. It was not particularly large, but with the help of gravity would be easily negotiated. But beyond the entrance I would have to enter an unknown. OK. Despite misgivings, I’d try.



Beyond the entrance a jumble of boulders was the next obstacle. They were a bit more difficult for me. Jake had no trouble whatever. Then it was clear walking for about 15 feet before hitting a mud bank that was so slick that even on the level I could barely stand. But the level didn’t count because to access the stream in which we were interested it would be necessary to descend 35 to 40 feet down a mud face that was smoothly rounded and if I had thought the level area was slippery the next day I was to learn that the decline was about 10 times moreso, and that once started there was no returning!

While I pondered my sanity, Jake had done the descent, and, even more importantly (and from my vantage point seemingly improbably), had managed the ascent as well.

So I knew it could be done. I just didn’t know if I could do it. But with Jake’s help, gravity (which I could have done well without), artificial hand and footholds, and sliding on my butt and belly like a stranded elephant seal I accessed the crystal clear stream. It was beautiful. The first creatures seen were Cave Spring Crayfish, Cambarus tenebrosus, and Prickly Cave Crayfish, Cambarus hamulatus, the former pigmented, the latter ghostly white. Both were abundant.

As we waded slowly into the bowels of Mother Earth I wondered whether we would be lucky enough to see the salamander that had drawn us there, the Pale Salamander, Gyrinophilus p. palleucus. In we went, around a couple of curves, and suddenly the stream became a deep pool. There, Jake, still in the lead, saw the first Pale Salamander and then a second one. In the deep water, neither was photographable. But a few hundred feet beyond the pool, nearly at the end of the cave, I found a Pale Salamander beneath a flat submerged rock. This one, about 5 inches long, was in shallow water and easily photographed. Success!

The Everglades (aka the Orange) Rat Snake is probably the most controversial rat snake of all times. Two questions may be asked: 1) Does the Everglades Rat Snake exist today and 2) Did the Everglades Rat Snake ever exist?



I can only speculate on question number one. My answer to that is “perhaps.” But my answer to question number two is an unequivocal “yes.” Yes, until the human intervention in the sheet water flow from the Kissimmee Prairie to the Everglades, until sod farms, sugarcane, and peanut farms replaced the vast expanses of waving sawgrass and scattered hammocks, this most beautiful (if you like orange) of the eastern rat snakes not only existed, but was abundant.

But with this having been said, if you subscribe to the genetic theories (many of which are themselves controversial, even faulty) that are sweeping across the herpetological world right now, the Everglades rat snake never did exist. It was at best a localized color phase of the black (eastern) rat snake and is now known as Pantherophis alleghaniensis.

What is (or was) an Everglades rat snake?

This Florida snake, described by Wilfred T. Neill in 1949 as Elaphe obsoleta rossalleni, was a rich orange both above and below. The four stripes were variably visible but not well defined. Secondary characteristics included a yellow-orange to orange chin (a little white may be present along the mental groove) and throat, deep orange eyes and a red tongue -- not black, not even red and black (the latter is an intergrade characteristic), just a plain solid red. Like others of this complex, the Everglades Rat Snake attained a length of 5 to 6-plus feet.

Even when I first visited Florida in the 1950s, the Everglades were no longer pristine, but Everglades Rat Snakes were abundant. US highway 27, then a narrow 2-lane roadway, was still closely edged along its western border with a broad, flowing, sawgrass prairie. Along the eastern edge of US 27 was a line of huge introduced Australian pines, backed by what was then proving to be a very effective drainage canal. But the adverse modifications of the natural hydrology was still new enough that yellow rat snakes (then Elaphe obsoleta quadrivittata) of the dryer uplands had not yet genetically swamped the more localized, much oranger, and common, Everglades Rat Snake.

As the years passed, wet prairie along US 27’s west side was drained and replaced by sugarcane plantations and sodfields. Following the ever expanding dryness the yellow rats swept in from all four compass points and intergraded with the beautiful orange rat snakes of the Lake Okeechobee region. Today, even the occasional pretty orange rat snake found by hobbyists usually has sufficient phenotypic abnormality to be readily identified as an intergrade.

So, do Everglades rat snakes persist? Phenotypically, perhaps, but very rarely, and genetically probably not. So overwhelming are the hidden yellow rat snake genes that even the best of today’s Everglades rats seldom breed true.

Sadly, it seems that the hobbyists of today, identifying the rat snakes they find primarily by location and only secondarily by appearance, are not easily able to appreciate the true beauty of the Everglades Rat Snakes of yesteryear. Human intervention has not been kind to this colorful and one time plentiful snake.

More photos under the jump...