A 'worm snake,' you say?

For a little over two years in the 1970s, Patti and I left Florida and spent three years in Massachusetts. During that time the venerable Massachusetts Herpetological Society was active and well, and the monthly meetings were a joy to attend.

At the society meetings I met Tom Tyning, a herpetologist who is now a professor at Berkshire Community College but was at that time a stalwart employee of Massachusetts Audubon. Tom had a wonderful sense of humor, so I thought he was kidding me when he said his herpetological nemesis in MA was the eastern worm snake, Carphophis amoenus amoenus. What I found strange about that statement was that Tom lived at the edge of a sandy, rolling, expanse of land that contained a thriving worm snake population. When I told him this, Tom’s response was something to the effect of a skeptical, “Oh, yeah, sure!”

So, a few days later, on a typically toasty summer afternoon, Tom and I met a couple of hundred feet from his back door, and began our search for fallen tree trunks, discarded newspapers and cardboard, all worm snake cover. Finding such cover was the work of only a minute.

Finding the first few worm snakes took only a few moments longer. Remembering the look of incredulity on Tom’s face has lasted a lifetime.

More photos under the jump.

Author, photographer, and columnist Richard Bartlett is one of the most prolific writers on herpetological subjects in the 20th century. With hundreds of books and articles to their credit, Richard and his wife Pat have spent over four decades documenting reptiles both in the field and in captivity. For a list of their current titles, please visit their page in our bookstore.