The Monitor

November, 2009

From the Editor's Desk

Newsletter Material

This is YOUR club. The more you give into it, the more you will get out of it. Your opinions, suggesions and submissions are welcome. Please feel free to submit any ideas or suggestions to: luvcatz7@tampabay.rr.com

President: Cayle Pearson
Vice-President: Michele Patton
Secretary: Carrie Gardner Treasurer: Doreen E. Saccardo
Chairman of the Board: John Soto
Editor: Carrie Gardner
Co-Editor: Doreen Saccardo
Field Trip Chair: Doreen Saccardo
Webmaster: Carrie Gardner

NEXT MEETING:
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
IAN FOGIO ON COLUBRIDS
7:00 p.m.
Moccasin Lake Nature Park
Clearwater, FL 727-793-2976
~~~~~~~~DON'T MISS IT~~~~~~~~

From our President Cayle Pearson:
If you have anything you would like to see the club do or have any ideas on field trips, etc, please contact Cayle at: diapsidevolution@gmail.com

Alton of Smelt Feed and Pet Supply is donating a $15.00 gift certificate every month for our raffle. His store is located at 4116 East 7th Avenue, Tampa, FL 33605, 813-248-2359

Web Page info: Calendar page is updated all the time as is Adoptions and Advertisements.

If you have photos you would like added to the "Club Photos" page, please email Carrie to have them added. YES, WE HAVE A PHOTO ALBUM THAT IS UP AND RUNNING AGAIN!

Carrie's Notes

In affect: July 2009 - Florida Freshwater Turtle Harvest - please see website for specifics (on the home page). Briefly...you can collect one turtle a day for non commercial uses. You can no longer collect turtle eggs. If you have turtles now that would make it illegal under current laws, you may go to www.myfwc.com to apply for a permit. If you need to transport more than one turtle, you can apply for a 45-day permit. For more information, please call Patricia Behnke at 850-251-2130.

United States Geological Survey has now released a study on the dangers of several boa constrictor species, including the common boa or red-tail boa.

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to take a stand on these laws. Our rights to own, breed or sell these animals is at risk. Stand up and make your opinion known. Call local media, write letters to your congressman, and support groups who are making a big difference like USARK. Become a member, or donate what you can, but we need to stand together against the organizations that want to ban snakes and other exotic animals. Please don't just sit back and think that someone else will write their letters, etc. YOU WILL BE AFFECTED too if these laws are passed.

Please, join www.usark.org's mailing list to see what you can do to help with the increasing number of proposed bills that are coming. Become a member or donate some money. All money donated is matched by ZooMed.

Bill H.R. 2811 was heard in Committee on November 6, 2009. Andrew Wyatt, President for USARK and Dr. Elliott Jacobsen, Professor of Zoological Medicine at the University of Florida testified opposing the bill. Congressman Kendrick Meek (D-FL), Dan Ashe from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Nancy Perry from the Humane Society of the U.S. and George Horne from South Florida Water Management District testified in favor of the Bill. Andrew Wyatt said that the Committee asked a lot of tough questions but thought it went pretty well.

On November 7th, we participated in Amnesty Day, put on by Plant City (special thanks to Shawna Everidge for inviting us). At our table we had Michele, Jason, Dennis, Dylan, John, Doreen, Claudia, Patsy and I. John brought two corn snakes, two ball pythons, and a milksnake and Jason brought his Kenyan sand boa as reptile ambassadors. Jason's snake learned to fly when a very strong gust of wind picked him up and blew him towards my face. Luckily, I caught the deli cup before it hit!

Besides playing with Anthony Green's beautiful 12-ft. albino Burmese python and taking lots of pictures, the funniest thing was when member Steve Johnson brought in his sulcata in for microchipping. To say that Buddy didn't appreciate being poked in his leg was an understatement, and he spent about half an hour running around at full speed before realizing he was walking over some very good food, and then started grazing. He was the hit of the event at that point and was filmed by a couple of news crews.

Cayle was there, working for Busch Gardens, and got his picture on www.tbo.com looking over a beautiful 14 ft. reticulated python that was turned in.

113 animals were turned in, and all 113 animals found homes. That is always good to hear. I DID end up coming home with a snake. He is an exotic (made in China) and is well, sort of wooden and painted purple. Anyone know where I can find wooden pinkies to feed him? They had a booth where you could paint wooden snakes. In fact, Dylan helped out more there than he did at our own booth!!

It was a fun day.

Ciao,
Carrie

Doreen's Column

Hi there~~

*****Last month we had George Heinrich as our guest speaker. George has been around for awhile and works with turtles and tortoises. He does some fantastic workshops at Boyd Hill Nature Park. See Carries recap.

*****Our guest speaker for November will be Ian Fogio on Colubrids. Don't miss this one.

*****December will be our annual Christmas-Holiday party. Please bring a side dish or dessert to share. The club will provide the main dish (ham), sodas, and paper goods. I usually make a big pasta dish. We will have a big ticket item (maybe two) to have a raffle on, but our main goal will be to have fun and fellowship.

*****After a lengthy discussion, we decided to move our "Big" auction date to March, after the Tampa reptile show. This will give us an opportunity to get more stuff from vendors at the show and, in case, we get any live stuff, John would not have to feed it for months. We also decided to move the location to the Hampton Inn and Suites, 39284 US 19 North, Tarpon Springs so we can have beer. This is the first time we ever moved the meeting location and I want to make sure that we get the word out from now until March. We will be starting that meeting around 6pm, and we can stay as long as we want. So we do not have to rush out of there. I want to make sure everyone will be aware of this location change, so please pass the word around.

*****Amnesty Day occurred on November 7, 2009 at Busch Gardens. We had a table there. There were a lot of animals coming in and only people who were pre approved were allowed to take any animals. We had a booth there, and we were represented by John, Carrie, Michele, Dennis, Dylan, Jason, Claudia, Patsy and me. Cayle was in the animal tent bagging and tagging. A lot of interesting things came in, Burmese pythons, a beautiful retic, four iguanas (and I did not go home with any.....I was real good), three gators, a number of birds, other snakes and lizards. It was a fun day, but a lot different from the first one we did.

*****If your label says "last issue" please pay your dues. If you have not gotten the newsletter in awhile, you probably owe dues.

*****I want to continually thank Carrie for all she does for the club. She keeps up with the newsletter and website. I also want to thank Alice for keeping up with the member list and my monthly reminder call.

*****I am typing this from work and forgot my birthday list. The only birthday I can remember is mine.....December 14.

*****Thank you to all who do their part for this club. You are what makes our society the GREATEST in the world. (I changed that from league, because there is no more league.)

*****Have a herpy day!!! Doreen~~~

Speaker Recap from Carrie

Last month's speaker was George Heinrich, who spoke on diamondback terrapin conservation. To be more specific, crab pot mortalities and solutions, and the role that racoons play in destroying nesting sites.

Diamondback terrapins are found along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to Corpus Christi, Texas. They are found in brackish waters and share their habitat with the blue crab. The coastline of Florida comprises 20% of their entire range, making it important that conservation and protection begin here.

The bycatch on crabpots set for the blue crabs also catch diamondback terrapins, and there is a high mortality rate of terrapins because of this. What typically happens is a female will swim into the trap, with more than one male following her. They all get trapped and drown. What's worse are the "ghost traps" - those that are lost or are abandoned. It is not uncommon to find the remains of 20 or more terrapins in these abandoned traps.

Obviously, a solution needs to be developed to prevent terrapins from becoming victims in these traps. In 1997, a bycatch reduction device (or BRD) was designed. It is a simple and inexpensive wire or plastic rectangle that is attached to the inside opening of the traps. Typical crabpots openings are 12.5 x 17.5 cm on the outside opening with inner opening 10 x 15 cm.

Studies conducted by George for several years attached BRDs to the inner opening of the crabpots that were 4.5 x 12 cm (along with control traps that didn't have the device). This prevented females and larger males from entering the traps. It also cut down the number of terrapins going in the traps simply because there wasn't a parade of males entering the traps while they were following their dream girls. However, it did not stop all of the terrapins from entering. Younger ones and small males still entered. But what they found in their study were that 73.2% of terrapins that were in the study could have been prevented from entering the traps, if the traps were fitted with working BRDs. The size of the crabs caught with the BRD equipped traps and the control traps remained the same. There were absolutely no problems with them entering the traps at all. And they ended up in better shape because they didn't have diamondback terrapins in there with them nipping and clawing at the crabs.

George mentioned that they are willing to give trappers free BRDs and attach them to their pots (trappers can have more than 80 pots). They are very inexpensive to make and can make a huge impact on the populations of diamondback terrapins.

Another contribution to diamondback terrapin mortality (as well as many other species) are racoons. They love to dig up nests and take the eggs. And they aren't like other wild animals, who just take what they need to sustain themselves. Racoons are very destructive animals, more often than not taking more than they can eat. During the study, George and his colleague removed racoons from a particular diamondback terrapin nesting area, and found that more eggs hatched and the survival rate of the babies improved. By the next nesting season, other racoons had taken the place of the ones removed, and the destruction was back.

Figuring out what to do about the large population of racoons is an essential part of figuring out how to save many species that are imperiled. As cute as they are, they are not cuddly little creatures. The destruction they cause throughout the animal world is immense, and they are a threat to pets as well. I can remember working for a vet and having an animal or two come through that was seriously injured when it crossed paths with racoons.

Besides an adorable little male diamondback terrapin, George brought in a bag of hatched eggs, and a complete skeleton of a terrapin. He put out a diagram and some of the members tried to put it together. Every nesting area that George goes through, he sweeps the area for pieces of eggs and bone. This tells him something about how the terrapins are doing in that particular area.

As usual, George gave a very interesting talk and we always enjoy when he comes to speak. I have to apologize for not having as detailed an article as usual, but there was a new recorder and it didn't tape! I bought the recorder on the way to the meeting and quickly figured out how to use it - maybe not well enough though. And I also have to figure out a way to keep a button on the microphone down . . . since that will stop the recording too . . . so my saga with digital recorders and microphones continue.

Michele's Musings

Frog Secretion Repels Mosquitoes

A bottle-green Australian frog may hold the key to a next generation mosquito repellent, according to a scientific paper that appeared last Wednesday. Scientists are marveling over secretions exuded by the dumpy tree frog (Litoria caerulea), a species that inhabits forests in northern Australia and New Guinea.

Using a small electrical current, they gave a gentle zap to a frog, causing smooth muscles in its glistening skin glands to contract and secrete the fluid that covers its skin. The secretions were washed off with distilled water and applied to the tails of lab mice. The mice were then exposed to dozens of Culex annulirostris mosquitoes — an aggressive Aussie "mozzie" notorious for transmitting encephalitis, among other diseases.

Mice which had been given the frogs' secretions remained bite-free for up to 50 minutes. Those mice which had been given DEET, the chemical that is typically used in commercial mosquito repellant, were protected for up to two hours. However the luckless rodents that had been selected as "controls" and were given neither frog secretion nor DEET, lasted just 12 minutes before their tails were bitten.

Two other Australian species, the desert tree frog (Litoria rubella) and Mjoberg's toadlet (Uperoleia mjobergi), were found to give off a mosquito repellent odor from their skin, although their secretions were not tested on mice.

The dumpy tree frog and its slimy secret are not in themselves considered a substitute to DEET, the repellent originally formulated for the U.S. army after World War II.

But the discovery highlights the potential of the unsung properties of amphibian skin, the paper says. "Many aspects of frog chemical ecology remain unexplored," it points out. The paper appears in Biology Letters, which is published on Wednesdays by Britain's Royal Society, the de-facto British academy of sciences. Frogs and toads have long been known to exude toxic or malodorous chemicals on their skin as a form of protection against fungus and insect pests and to ward off predators. Previous research has uncovered that these secretions can also be powerful painkillers and hallucinogens. Work is now unfolding to synthesize such molecules so that they can be reproduced pharmaceutically.

You can find this article at http://www.animal.discovery.com Animal Planet's website.

~From "277 Secrets Your Snake (and Lizard) Wants You to Know" by Paulette Cooper

Five Tricks to Avoid Being Bitten and the Most Common Causes of Snakebites

Sharon Bolton is always filled with good ideas, based on her experience with eighteen snakes (not to mention five cats, three dogs, a canary, and other assorted animals). She suggests he first three ways below that you can avoid being bitten by a snake that you're handling.

Getting the hook: "Handle the snake with a hook, especially with all venomous snakes, for all activities, when removing it from the cage."

An apple a day keeps the snake away: "Spray bitter apple on your hands and arms before handling a snake. The taste will discourage the snake from repeating its biting (Although apples might not help you the first time.)"

Pillow talk: "Put your hand in a pillowcase and handle the snake through that."

Dress for success: "Get a pair of very thin cotton or gardening gloves - maybe even a long-sleeved shirt - and wear them when you're handling a snake," she says.

And speaking of gloves,, Dave Fulton says that rubber gloves work well with a smallish snake that is "a bit nippy. These give a good ‘feel' and grip well, but their major benefit is that the rubber tastes absolutely foul to the snake, and I'm assured they rarely bite more than twice."

Here's more on the bill of bites. These precautions may help prevent the type of bite called an "illegitimate bite," one received when handling (or approaching) a snake for work, or play, while attempting to catch it, etc.

The other type of bite is called, not surprisingly, a "legitimate bite," which is accidentally received by people who just happen to be unlucky enough to be in the area of the snake. The end result is the same: It sucks to get bitten by a snake. If you make the following mistakes, it may very well happen:

[Ed. Note: please check all that apply!]

____If you've just handled food and then touch a snake, when the snake smells the food on you warm hand, it may confuse your hand with prey and strike it. This is especially likely to occur among those who feed their snakes live rodents.

____If you wake snakes up when they're still sleeping, they might strike. Shh, let them sleep.

____Showing nervousness or fear may cause a snake to strike. A snake senses both and doesn't like it one bit. (Or could that be one bite?)

Watch Out For Perfume!

Some snakes despise perfume - especially perfumes containing the musk of the civet cat - so much that they may even strike at the glass when a person wearing the foul odor comes nearby. Talk about everybody being a critic.

"My boas go into a rage when the smell any of those musky heavy perfumes of the sort that drive people off of elevators," says one snake owner.

Which perfumes are these? Some snakes are reported to hate JOOP. The other? One snake owner posted that her daughter once worked at Victoria's Secret, and when she wore their perfume and came near her snake afterward, "It immediately tried to bite her in the face."

Maybe that's Victoria's secret.

Thank a Veteran!

Until Next Month,
Carrie

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