Curse of Knowledge

 I’m comfortable admitting that I’m bad at most things.  I’m really bad with names, I’m terrible with numbers, and aside from changing a tire or jump-starting a car, I’m an awful mechanic.  I’m not good with finances.  I wish I were a better writer and public speaker.  I cannot hold my own in a conversation about football, beer brewing, brand names, or corporate workplace culture.  I’m not very handy. I’m not keen on what's going on in Hollywood or who won a Grammy Award or who got eliminated on that one show.

I also really don’t like small talk.  I don’t know how to chit chat for the sake of avoiding awkwardness.  I much prefer what most would consider “awkward silence” - I just call it “silence”.

“Cold out there??? HAHAHA”

“Yep, it sure is…”

“We could use a warm up!  WHERE’S THAT GLOBAL WARMING?!”

“I mean, it’s Jan-”

“We had that warm up the second week of December, remember that?  Or maybe it was the third week of November.  Anyway, I was out there in shorts!  It felt like Florida!  BRING MORE OF THAT ON!!”

“Well, uh, that wouldn’t-”

“BUUUUT if we have to suck this up for another few months I guess it’s not the end of the world.  Florida IS nice and all but there are also gators and snakes and “tHe sTaTe BiRd”, the mosquitoes HAHAHA.

*Me scheming to find a way out of this stupid conversation*

But speaking of gators and snakes, those are two of a select few things I do know about and like.  Look, I didn’t choose this life, the life chose me.  

Most people who know and like snakes know a lot about them.  You’re either all in or you’re all out.  What happens is you develop a fondness for something most people make ugly faces at, and then you have to double down.  By that, I mean learn about and become fascinated by snakes and then constantly defend them against a contrarian society unwilling to offer a moment of their time to allow you to explain why snakes ought to be respected and not maligned as if they are Satan incarnate.  It’s frustrating from this side of the line, watching otherwise intelligent and fully functioning adults contort their bodies and spew the most illogical accusations against something they know little to nothing about.  Few things make people do this.  Spiders, sure. Coyotes are culprits in suburban mom circles. 

Sometimes, in a controlled environment where I have a captive audience, I get to talk about snakes (or salamanders, or turtles, or frogs, etc) for people who have left the comfort of their homes to learn.  I do not take this lightly.  These talks are usually held in libraries but sometimes at universities or other large venues where travel, parking, and other logistics can be tricky.  That’s a lot of pressure on me to deliver.  But here’s where I'd struggle the most - exactly what will I say?

For a long time I’d present a slide show and just talk about what I thought people wanted to know.  For example, if my topic was native turtles, I would first summarize what a turtle is, touch on turtle cladistics, maybe focus on a select few local species, and then always end with conservation.  Audiences appeared engaged, so I just repeated the technique time and time again.  

But as time went on, I noticed that I was fielding some elemental questions, few of which had been derived from my talk.  “What does a turtle’s shell feel like?  How can you tell the age of a turtle?  What should I do if I see a turtle on the road?”  I began to get the feeling that the phylogeny of the family Emydidae was not a burning topic in the minds of general naturalists on a Thursday evening.

Fun and unpretentious titles work best

 The problem I had gotten myself into was that I had become ultra herp-centric.  One may call it an obsession.  And I had long gotten past the Herps 101 phase.  I had forgotten how to effectively communicate my topics to a layperson.  Reminding myself that most people understandably do not have even a fundamental understanding of what a reptile or amphibian is became an important step.  But did you know that some people don’t even consider a snake an animal?  Seriously.  A cow, a pig, a lion, those are animals - but a snake is something else.  

My point is, unless you’re drafting a scholarly paper, use the KISS method (keep it simple, stupid). Know your audience. You can easily distance yourself from some truly worthy folks by allowing the nerd factor to take over.

Orrin Higgins' Farm

Since late 2017 my family and I have lived in a small, isolated subdivision in Wayne Township.  At first glance, there isn't much to speak about in regard to the neighborhood.  In many respects, is a typical early-90s development, complete with cul de sacs and unimaginative street names (each named for a bird and not all are native to the region - way to go on that one).   The community itself was christened "Meadow Wood", quite possibly the most generic and uninspired name in the history of the universe.  It's also kind of confusing because meadows are what they are because there are no trees, and therefore no wood.  But it must have sounded great to the developers who built the subdivision and to home shoppers then and now.  Safe and naturey.  But I digress.

Walking the curvy streets of Meadow Wood, there doesn't appear to be much if any history whatsoever.  But a sharp eye and a penchant for dusty old books gave rise to this post which I'm sure absolutely no one will care about since it is niche as hell.  I'm gonna do it anyway.

Meadow Wood, and the land surrounding it, was once a gently rolling landscape of tallgrass prairie and savanna.  There are indications that the water table was quite high at one point and that tiling in the mid-19th century effectively dried most of the area for growing crops.  Some of the local drain tiles have been removed, mostly across the road where a seven hundred-plus acre preserve sits.  That preserve is comprised of restored prairie, marsh, and fen habitat, with a one-and-a-half-mile length of river (West Branch of the DuPage River) and two reclaimed quarries (Deep Quarry Lake and Bass Lake).  I'm still working on a series of posts about the preserve itself - the first is here.

Starting in the 1830s, European settlers from the East, primarily Germans, migrated toward northern Illinois for new opportunities.  One of these settlers was Orrin Higgins.  Born in Vermont in 1818, he spent the majority of his life in Ohio before continuing west and landing in Wayne Township in 1840.    He married Betsy Irish in 1845 and together they had four children - Laura, Rosa, Job, and Anna ("Belle").  Their farm was where Meadow Wood sits today.

In 1882, the Higgins property enjoyed its 15 minutes of fame when it was discovered that a rich bounty of fossil fuels might be had there.  

Suffice it to say, "the Junction" (today, West Chicago) never did become a grand health resort or large coal/oil mining town, but we can boast some seriously good tacos and horchata.

Orrin passed away in 1887 at the age of 67, and Betsy followed seven years later in 1894.  Orrin, his wife Betsy, and their oldest daughter Laura were interred at Oakwood Cemetery in West Chicago.

While Orrin claimed land in Wayne Township, a plat map from 1851 does not plot homesteads, only saw mills, post offices, and school houses.  It also spells out landowners, but fails to delineate property boundaries.  The blue X in the map below is roughly where the Higgins' homestead stood.  

Most interesting is that the road which leads to Meadow Wood today, Klein Road, is not featured on this map.  Fair Oaks Road is on this map, running north and south east of the river.  This makes me wonder how the Higgins family accessed their farm.  It seems highly unlikely that access to the farm was via Fair Oaks Road, but it's possible.  This map may not be purely accurate.  There is no indication that Fair Oaks Road ever crossed the river - twice - so I don't know what's up with that.

              

Whomever drew the plat map in 1874 did a much more thorough job.  Properties are clearly drawn out and now we see the locations of farmsteads.  In short, there were both changes to the landscape between 1851 and 1874, AND several errors I've found.  For example, the West Branch of the DuPage River is erroneously labeled as the East Branch, which is actually about six and a half miles east.  So the maps are imperfect - bear that in mind.

1874

In the 1874 map above, the farmstead of Orrin Higgins is clearly labeled near left-center.  There are three black squares (directly over "Orrin") which indicate a house and two barns or other substantial outbuildings. The series of dashes around the buildings indicate an orchard.  There are about two larger blotches which may indicate trees.  There is a large swath of timber just south of the Higgins property, and many of those trees still exist today.

And here is an aerial photo from 1939.  By this time, the farm is owned by the Schramer family.  Visible in the center is a dense cluster of trees, an orchard, a barn, and several other smaller buildings (the house is there, casting a shadow from the southwesterly sun, along the driveway).  This dense cluster appears well-established and probably contains some pre-settlement trees.  Most if not all of the scattered trees to the immediate south are naturally occurring and predate European settlement.  

Also visible here is the old property line that separated Orrin Higgin's holdings from that of R. H. Reed (see 1874 map).  Today, this line separates the West Branch Forest Preserve (north) from the Old Wayne Golf Club (south).  

Also, I quit being a cheapskate criminal and just paid for this image.  Grainy screenshots cluttered with watermarks are so tacky.

I don't know how or when the Higgins home met its fate, but a replacement was constructed in 1912.  It is a beautiful brick farmhouse and thankfully it was spared when all of the other associated farm infrastructure was demolished sometime between 1988 and 1993. For most of the twentieth century, the farm and associated buildings belonged to the Schramers.  Theodore W Schramer and his wife Pearl lived in the brick house for many years.  Theodore was the great-grandson of Johann Schramer, one of the earliest residents of DuPage County.  Among other things, he was president of the Benjamin School District board of directors.

This sign hangs inside Benjamin Middle School.  Two years later (in 1965), Theodore died at the age of fifty.

The old Higgins farm - at this point in time, the Schramer farm - was purchased by Russell Builders around 1990.  In 1992, construction began on a new subdivision known as Meadow Wood. 

Fortunately, Russell had the foresight to keep the Schramer farmhouse intact and preserve most of the old growth trees on the property, but as usual, they demolished the old barn and all other outbuildings.

This was taken in November of 1993.  Courtesy of neighbor Barry Mehrman.  

Another shot of new houses being built, courtesy of a former owner of one of these (unknown).  1993.

The Schramer farmhouse as it appears today.

This cul de sac is the exact location of the old barn that was demolished prior to redevelopment by Russell Builders.

The "graceful oaks", as described by Russell, are still around and truly bring a sense of timelessness and perseverance.  Most are well over a century old, and could be upward of two hundred years old.  I am very glad they are still around.  To see what they have over the years...

A gorgeous shagbark hickory and a bur oak.  The sidewalk respectfully winds around the trunk of the hickory.

A large bur oak at the south entrance to Meadow Wood (with a smaller hickory in the foreground).

Another beautiful bur oak standing in front of what was the Russell office/showcase model (now just another home).

A group of old bur oaks and shagbark hickories.  The Schramer farmhouse is tucked away behind trees on the right.

Another view of some of the historic trees on a gentle rise.

My daughter Lumen standing under some huge oaks with the Schramer home in the background.

Shifting Baseline Syndrome

 John Cebula had a good point.

Many years ago, the retired college professor and amateur herpetologist would respond, in a somewhat discouraging manner, to field notes I had broadcast on social media.  At least that's how I saw it at the time.  I was committed to seeking reptiles and amphibians in the northwest corner of DuPage County and then share my findings.  If I had observed, for example, two fox snakes, two smooth green snakes, a milk snake, and a handful of common garters, I was on cloud nine.  But John's response was invariably a more sophisticated version of "that's cute".  He made sure to talk about all the herps he'd find back in the 80s while assisting Dan Ludwig & company with a county herp survey.

"Back in those days, we found smooth green snakes by the dozen.  I found a Blanding's turtle at the intersection of North Avenue and IL Rt. 59.  Fox snakes weren't uncommon as they are today."

Mentally, I dismissed these remarks.  John was a very nice guy, but really, with all of the natural areas around, how much could have really changed in nearly forty years?

Wisdom comes with time.  It would be years before I realized the fallacious nature of that old perspective I had been holding tight to.  Experience taught me that I had suffered a bad case of shifting baseline syndrome.

I mistakenly saw the 2017 landscape as THE baseline by which I gauged how well - or poor - nature was doing in suburbia.  That's the year I left the big city and settled in a semi-rural patch of suburbia 30 miles to the west.  The further west I drove on North Ave (IL. Rt. 64), the less developed the land was.  There were still some old homesteads, barns, and other features reminiscent of yesteryear and I just assumed that since they had been there this long, they're not going anywhere.

But since 2017, I've borne witness to big changes.  Some of the old homesteads had outstayed their welcome and were torn down to make room for detention basins and car washes.  Weedy lots that held a lot of biodiversity potential have been purchased and developed.  The southwest corner of Roosevelt Road and Winfield Road in Winfield, once a mature woodland directly across the street from Cantigny, was completely cleared to make room for a gas station.  It was clear to me that there was no such thing as permanence.  What originally appeared to me as a "finished piece" was in fact changing the whole time.  It made me wonder about the changes I wasn't aware of that had occurred in the area 5, 10, 20 years before.

Forty years ago, there were many, many acres of undeveloped land in my area.  In those days, John reveled in the richness of snake species and numbers, maybe so much that even he couldn't imagine a better time and place.  I enter the picture, working with what's available, and what I see as a good day would have been pathetic in John's day.  

When I read naturalist's accounts about the 19th century Illinois landscape, it is abundantly clear that we are living in a whole different era.  The ease at which Robert Kennicott procured Blanding's turtles in and around Glenview in the 1850s is remarkable (they are state-endangered today).  He found so many Graham's crayfish snakes within walking distance of his home that his pal Spencer Baird, at the Smithsonian, told him to stop sending specimens - he had more than enough.  And the Kirtland's snakes were probably everywhere nice, wet patches of prairie existed.  Kennicott of course is known for his discovery of the species in 1855 and likely didn't have to walk far from his home at the Grove to find it.   In 1892, Harrison Garman acknowledged the dramatic reduction of Kirtland's snakes in Illinois within his own lifetime.  He described the species as "formerly common in the north half of the State; rare at present" and added "A handsome snake, which ten years ago was not uncommon along prairie brooks...tiling, ditching, and cultivation of the soil have destroyed its haunts and nearly exterminated it."  Of course, in the decades since, with the implementation of mechanized agricultural practices, Kirtland's snakes are even more rare.  I'm confident I would have had a veritable field day counting Kirtland's snakes in 1892, and today a "good" population might occur on a scrap of habitat an acre in size and nowhere else beyond its artificial borders for many miles.

Entire landscapes have transformed into something unrecognizable, mostly due to human encroachment.  Most of the time, these are not good transformations.  H.S. Pepoon documented Chicago-area landscapes for his 1927 book "Flora of the Chicago Region".  These landscapes look almost pristine even though Europeans had been in the area for a century previous.  

Take this photograph, for example.  It is a view from Edgebrook Forest Preserve, located on the northwest side of Chicago.  It is beautiful. The caption states, "The trees are white ash".  Judging by the width of the path, these trees are mature and quite large.  Beside some (presumably native) shrubs, the woodland appears to be open and free of brush.  The lush herbaceous vegetation appears healthy; ample sunshine is reaching the duff layer.

I do not currently have an updated view available from this same or similar perspective, but I can assure you that these woods no longer look like this.  Most if not all of these ash trees are gone, victims of the emerald ash borer which has wreaked havoc on the regions' ashes.  In their places are mostly successional vegetation, including young green ash trees but also maples, buckthorn, honeysuckle, and various others.  Some large oaks remain alongside young oaks that have been planted in recent years.  The forest structure has undergone a substantial overhaul, and not for the better.

Now, check this out.  I took this photo at Rubio Woods south of 143rd Street back in 2014.  This is what a lot of the region's woodlands look like today.  A layperson might walk by this and feel a connection to nature.  It's green, it's lush.  The song of a raucous blue jay sounds from somewhere overhead.  All is good in the world.

But ecologists are screaming inside because there is lots wrong here.  I can go on and on about it (invasive species, fire suppression, etc etc) but my point is, little or no familiarity with what we consider to be our baseline for what a given ecosystem is supposed to look like can be dangerous.  

Henry Cowles was a pioneer ecologist who studied vegetative succession in the Chicago area

A skeptical college professor (from the same institution that had once had Dr. Robert Betz on staff, ironically) would ask, "From what period of the past should we be restoring land to?  A hundred years ago?  Two hundred?  A thousand?  THE ICE AGE??  Should we re-introduce wolves, bears, and mountain lions?"  A complicated problem to solve, actually.  No, we are well past the point of releasing large and potentially dangerous predators into our little scraps of greenspaces.  And no, we cannot change the trajectory of the Chicago River back to its original course (nor can we restore it back into a sluggish little stream).  No, we cannot bring back the Skokie Marsh, the Winnebago Swamp, or the Grand Kankakee Marsh.  Even our best efforts at restoring prairie create something of a shadow of the real thing; intact soil horizons and hydrology are key and these have too often been interrupted.  The simple answer to that question is, we can do the best we can - within reason - with what we know from history.

John Cebula's complaints over not not seeing enough snakes in 2025 doesn't mean he's bad at finding snakes.  It means he knows that once time, there were a lot more.  And that maybe one day, there won't be any at all.

History matters.

Ozarks: Snubbed by Rain

I was back down in the southern Missouri Ozarks recently to witness the fall migration of the ringed salamander.  I headed down on rather short notice, seeing as rain was in the forecast that particular evening.  When I arrived in St. Louis around 10:00 PM, I met up with my Missouri friend Pete and drove to a promising location.  The problem was that the rain never came.  The low pressure system veered off course to the south, leaving us dry as a bone.  Without rain in the picture, we had to change our plans.

The next morning we headed several hours southwest to a well-hidden limestone glade Pete had only visited once prior.  We had to walk through a dense prairie to reach the wood line, beyond which was a glade interspersed with stunted oaks and other thick vegetation.  The area was stunningly beautiful.  

The herping itself was painfully slow.  Our first snake was a common garter (Thamnophis sirtalis).

One of several ringneck snakes (Diadophis punctatus) found in a wooded area

A large adult western ribbon (Thamnophis proximus) Pete found

One of several rough earth snakes (Virginia striatula).  Not far from this snake, Pete and I watched a young eastern collared lizard (Crotaphytus collaris) dart from under a rock and into a tangled mess of thorns and rock.

A decent-sized eastern coachwhip (Masticophis flagellum) darted into a hollow within this outcrop.  Pete and I needed a break anyway, so we sat and waited at least thirty minutes to see if the snake would come back out.  It did not.

When we got back to the car, I must have taken my hat off and placed it on the car while chugging water.  Turns out that I didn't remember to take it back until we were about forty-five minutes back toward St. Louis.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am dead serious about my hats.  I don't have many, for several reasons but most importantly because I have a colossal head.  Most hats don't fit me comfortably.  And the hat I left there in that tiny dirt pull-over down some rural road in the Ozarks happened to be my "uncle hat".  It was a simple, dark blue cap with a mesh back and snap adjustment.  It was a gas station find at least twenty years ago.  And that hat has topped my head throughout the world, much to the mild embarrassment of my family due to its absolutely ragged condition.  

I could have insisted we go back to get it, but I opted not to.  Because, well, life moves on.

Toads of Meadow Wood

There are aspects of my neighborhood that are characteristic of modern suburban communities elsewhere.  Curvilinear streets, lush green lawns, and mulched young parkway trees.  There are residents walking their dogs and riding bicycles.  Children play in the cul-de-sacs.  For a lot of people, picturesque.  Safe.  Ideal.

But lurking in the shadows like trolls under a bridge are the toads.  Squat, rotund little beasts that appear out of place in such a dignified setting.  Seeing one is a matter of chance.  On summer days, they are occasionally exhumed from their earthy sanctums by well-intentioned gardeners.  And at night - especially humid nights - they may be seen hopping across a driveway or sidewalk while hunting for food.  But I'd venture that most people hardly ever see toads.  At least here, where I live, in a quiet, prim and proper corner of suburbia.

The toad knows its way around the kitchen.  Here, they originate in the wetlands across the quiet, two-lane road near my house.  The most substantial and likely only permanent marsh is a little over 1500 feet away.  The toads breed here each spring, their songs filling the night air with the most elegant and harmonious trill.  Eggs are laid in long strands and hatch quickly into tiny black larvae.  By mid-summer, the larvae metamorphose into tiny, frail toadlets.  And these toadlets quickly disperse away from the water to higher ground, often across the quiet two-lane road and into the neighborhood.

Few of the toadlets actually make it.  Most succumb to the elements, to predation, and to human-related factors such as vehicles and lawnmowers.  Those lucky enough to avoid these challenges grow quickly and in a matter of a month can quintuple their size, no longer dark and frail but now resembling a smaller version of a mature toad.

The toadlets do not know what's in store for them in Meadow Wood.  They just know it's higher ground.  Most will never know what nature is.  Instead, they will find an alternate reality that ironically is well-suited to their lifestyles.

As it turns out, a suburban neighborhood has a lot to offer to toads.  Mulched gardens for burrowing, lots of hiding places in the form of home exterior features, and maybe most importantly, an absence of snakes.  In the eight years I've lived here, I've never found a single gartersnake in my neighborhood.  They are more at home down in the prairie and wetlands below where they enjoy a variety and abundance of prey and have no need to leave.

Toads are common in the Chicago region and I've been guilty of passing them up in the past.  But living here has opened my eyes to how ingenious they are.  I truly appreciate them and value each sighting (although I stopped photographing and Herpmapping every single one years ago).

A male toad trying to attract a female.  This was taken at the marsh across the street.  

This toad spent the better part of the summer of 2018 living under our front stoop.  And each night it would roost under a horizontal length of downspout.  Protected from above and in the path of bugs tracing the perimeter of the porch.

Another porch toad engaged in Operation Bug Interception.

One of countless toads I see in our overgrown side yard.

This toad is likely a female but her dad bod game is strong.

This is a screen grab from a now infamous video where Lumen, clearly under the weather and spewing snot every which way, gently picks up a toad, laughs maniacally, and shouts, "Daddy, I got the code!".

A very large toad.

Lumen holding the very large toad.  This was a particularly hot and dry summer and as I recall, this was one of only a few toads seen the entire summer.

The toads are quite variable in appearance.  This one is a bit more orange.

I watched this toad for some time as it sat under the outdoor light on the garage.  It had learned that insects congregate at the lights and often fall to the ground.  Here, it sizes up a small insect.

This was One-Eyed Willy.  Willy lived directly across the street from me, each night appearing at the edge of the sidewalk.  Each night on my walk, I'd check on Willy and like clockwork, he was practically in the same spot.

Long live the toads of Meadow Wood!

Unpopular Opinions: Rapidfire

 1)  Those tasked with disseminating information about local nature & natural history in 2025 - nature center staff, interpretive naturalists, and especially social media content creators - are very often poorly informed on their topics (especially herps).  Their keen ability to engage with the public belies a lack of accurate knowledge or experience.  Why is this a problem?  Because the public is largely ignorant of these kinds of things.  And when they visit a nature center, or subscribe to a conservation organization's social media account, they trust that whatever they are being told is factual.  

In fact, those qualified to educate others are the people who work in dusty museum basements.  The ones that obsess over their work.  The ones that are passionate.  Alas, these people are not suited for educating in today's rapid-fire world of interpretive Instagram posts backed by hip hop music.  

2)  The abundance of spent mylar balloons littering the woods is a major distraction to actual serious environmental issues such as stream bank erosion and invasive species.

Americans have been raised to adulthood not knowing what a healthy woodland looks like, or what a healthy river looks like.  We see a forest preserve full of plants and a stream running through it and nod in approval.  In reality, our rivers take on far too much runoff and sedimentation devastates biodiversity.  

Our woodlands have been infested with nonnative honeysuckle and buckthorn for over a century.  Our marshes have been infested with Phragmites, reed canary grass, and many more for decades.  We have some historical context of what constitutes a healthy ecosystem but most are ignorant about it. 

Of course, if you were to ask me what the biggest contributor to environmental collapse is, it's consumerism.  But that's not a novel viewpoint.  Just an inconvenient one.

3)  Herpetology podcasts - most of them are awful.  I spend a fair deal of time in my car and I often enjoy listening to podcasts.  There are a handful of good herp-themed podcasts out there (Snake Talk, So Much Pingle, Colubrid & Colubrid Radio), but most are insufferable.  

Here's some ideas for improvement:  Learn to edit out long, drawn out periods of silence and bouts of connection issues.  Introduce your guests or allow them to introduce themselves.  Not everyone is in your circle...and by the way, the whole idea of podcasters interviewing podcasters over and over and over is annoying and imparts a cliquey vibe.  Certainly there are more people out there into this stuff?  Finally, if you expect subscriptions and sponsors, sound enthusiastic.  Some of these long-time hosts sound straight-up burnt out.  Take a break and come back in a month or a year or never.

4)  Not everyone needs to convert their entire lawns to vegetable gardens or tallgrass prairies.  Don't guilt-trip others for having turf grass, especially if you also have turf grass.  There are a LOT of hypocrites out there with nothing else better to do with their time.

5)  Domestic cats belong indoors.  Period.  Yes, they kill a substantial amount of wildlife.  No, they are not a one-to-one replacement for predators we've eradicated.  If you are fine with cats exposed to predation, disease, vehicles, and harsh elements, you are objectively careless.

6) The politicization of conservation will be the downfall of conservation just as the politicization of nearly anything solves nothing.  

7)  Americans are very tribalistic.  We want validation from others in our groups (even when we are wrong) and will go to great lengths for it, often looking very stupid in the process.  

8)  If you purchase a product solely because the packaging sports some sort of little green leaf logo indicating "environmental friendliness", you are most likely misled. The little green leaf means nothing.  Maybe it used to, but once marketing firms found that the green leaf bolsters sales from the crunchy sector, companies began applying it to anything and everything.  Yesterday, I saw a package of balloons with the logo.  We fall for that stuff a lot.  

(A graphic of two hands cupping soil and a little seedling also work in this manner.)

This means nothing

9)  Speaking of greenwashing, people don't know how to think critically when faced with a greenwashing campaign.  It shouldn't matter that the 24-case of bottled water you bought contains "up to" ANY percent of plants.  It's still going to be mostly all plastic.

10)  And speaking of plastic, there's a really, really good chance that the plastic you honorably place into your recycling bin isn't recycled.  

11)  Snakes don't chase people.  That's actually a fact, regardless of what you've heard.  

It's funny how stories of snakes chasing have slowed with the advent of smart phone technology, kind of like ghost sightings, flying saucers, bigfoot...you get the picture.

12)  Ready for this one?  Deli-cuppers make the most cringe field herpers.  Yes, I said it.  

Too many (not all) plod about, complaining of the weather and bugs and mud and overall being a total drag.  They get tired easily because they are pale, out of shape, and not used to rigorous physical activity.  They are one small step above gamers.

I appreciate that they want to experience the thrills of a naturalist's quest, but I can usually predict the outcome, and it's almost never a good one.

13)  Breeding ball pythons is not conservation.  

14)  Nature blogs are irrelevant.  Yes, even this one.  YouTube and Tik Tok are king.  Few want to write anymore and certainly fewer want to read.  I really like YouTube - a lot - but it and other video platforms have taken a huge share of the self-expression industry, leaving people like me to type away at our desks, the echoes of our keystrokes lost in a bombardment of competing video personalities.

UPDATE (8/27/25):  I stand corrected.  My friend Mike (who invented herp blogging and needs no introduction) recently returned to blogging after a three-year hiatus.  And he left quite an impression.  See his blog here.

15)  Cicadas are beautiful, intriguing animals and nothing anyone can say will ever change that.

(There are a few dueling cicadas calling outside my office window at the moment.)

16)  Tradition is the living faith of the dead, and traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.  - Jaroslav Pelikan

tHaNk yOu fOr CoMiNg tO mY tEd TaLk

Slightly Off-Topic: Cornflake the Corn Snake

 I often credit the plains garter snake for my love of snakes, and that largely holds true.  But there was one particular snake that expanded my understanding of snakes and represented a gateway to the multitude of snakes that lived beyond the streets of Chicago.  I think it's about time to memorialize this animal.

As usual, I like to provide some backstory.  In the early nineties, I befriended a neighborhood boy who had recently moved to Chicago from northwestern Georgia.  He was an outdoors type, like I was, but came from a place very different from the city and his range of outdoors activities far surpassed mine.  In his bedroom stood a chest of drawers topped by a ten-gallon aquarium, and in that aquarium lived what he called an "Egyptian ratsnake" (I would much later come to understand that this was a diadem ratsnake (Spalerosophis diadema).  It was often coiled tightly on the green astroturf, next to its hot rock.  Every time I'd go to my friend's house, I would gravitate toward this snake.  I spent a lot of time looking at and holding it.  Then a few months later, it was gone and in its place was a hatchling California kingsnake.  That one didn't last long for one reason or another, and it was swiftly replaced by an adult "Florida corn snake".

I was extremely fascinated by this corn snake.  It was about four feet long and clad in earthy oranges and browns with a black and white checkerboard belly.  In the absence of a hide, it too spent its days coiled atop the Astroturf next to the hot rock.  And I don't believe a day went by when I didn't take it out to handle it.  The only attention it received from my friend was during feeding time.  My friend fed it live mice, and the snake would almost immediately strike and constrict the mouse until it was dead.  Then it swallowed the mouse whole.  This was all new to me, since the garters at my house were fed worms and minnows and simply grabbed and swallowed them alive.

The neighborhood kids mostly hated him

Me pretending to be strangled 

I know this probably sounds weird to many people, but I noticed that the corn snake not only felt different than the garters, but it smelled different too.  It's tough to describe, but it's a clean smell.  I call it the "corn snake smell".  I notice that all corn snakes smell exactly the same - even slightly distinct from other members of its genus such as grey ratsnakes.  

After about a year or two, my friend's family returned to Georgia.  My friend gifted me the corn snake before he left, knowing it would be in good hands.  This was shortly after my parents separated, so the timing was serendipitous.  My dad never allowed any snakes in the house - not even my garters.  Those had to be kept in terrariums on our patio table, underneath an awning.  Now I had a legit collection - garters and a corn snake - in my modest bedroom (thanks, mom).  

Keeping a four-foot snake in a twenty-inch enclosure didn't feel right.  One day, my mom drove me to Pet Supplies Plus where she bought me a forty gallon "breeder" terrarium.  I also selected a large bag of fir bark chips to replace the lousy and unsightly artificial turf.  To this day, I can never smell this kind of bark and not be whisked away to my first corn snake enclosure.  The huge new enclosure took up every inch of desk space, giving me another reason to avoid doing my homework.

Sometimes we called him "Cornflake the corn snake", but I don't think he ever had an official name (I wasn't into naming herps).  He was with me the first time I ever presented about snakes to an audience, when I was in the eighth grade.  I remember having to get permission from my principal to bring a snake into the school, and I was happy when permission was granted.  The principal stood by the door while I held the snake and talked to my class; the talk was so well-received that I was asked to do the same presentation for two other grades.  Skip class and talk about snakes?  A no-brainer.

My family moved to a new house in the late summer of 1996, and therefore so did my corn snake (and a few others I had acquired since).  In 1997, I bought a second corn snake, an adult amelanistic female, with the intent on breeding the snakes.  I was a few years deep into Reptiles magazine, had devoured every single book on snakes I could find, and felt like I was ready to take this next step.  After some cycling and conditioning, I introduced my male corn snake to the female in the spring of 1998, and a couple of months later, had eggs which in turn hatched later that summer.  There is an interesting story related to that process, but at the risk of deviating too far from the main subject, I digress.  

Cornflake's offspring (with the mother)

Around the time my corn snake became a father, he began showing signs of failing health.  He became increasingly lethargic and accepted food only sporadically, losing weight.  Looking back, I should have addressed his condition with more urgency, but I was pretty enamored with this beautiful batch of baby corn snakes for the first time in my life, as well as getting the adult female back in shape after oviposition.  When I see photos of him from 1998, I'm overcome with a feeling of guilt, even though his condition may have been untreatable.  He died in early 1999.

In the coming years, I'd work with countless other snakes, even though my primary interests revolved around the natural history of wild snakes (and still do).  But the lasting effects of owning and caring for my first corn snake are undeniable.  I hope, somewhere out there, his progeny are inspiring other kids the way he inspired me.

Slightly Off-Topic: Milksnake in the Alley

Once upon a time, I found a milksnake in my alley.  Well, if you've read enough of this blog over the years, you'll know that that doesn't sound all that unusual.  But this story is different.  It's a short story about an unlikely predicament - and the value of being in the right place at the right time.

July 12, 2017 started as a normal Wednesday.  I was at work when shortly before noon, I received a DM from someone on the Jefferson Park Neighborhood Association Facebook page (to clarify, there isn't, or wasn't, an actual association - at least not like the weird, self-important ones out here in the far western burbs.  I think it was just a loose conglomerate of minor community leaders and other loud people).  I was told that a Jefferson Park resident had made a most unusual discovery - a snake that appeared to be pinned under a garbage can in the alley.  The snake was red and white, which didn't make sense to me.  So I asked for the resident to take a photo.

The photo that was sent to me shortly afterward really had me perplexed.  It looked like an amelanistic milksnake of Mexican origin, maybe a Nelson's milksnake.  These are somewhat popular in the exotic pet trade.  How did the snake end up in an alley, stuck under a garbage can?

I did what any self-respecting snake advocate would do.  I left work (in the Hermosa community) on my lunch break and high-tailed it to Jefferson Park.  En route, an absolute gusher of a downpour slowed my progress as traffic turned bumper to bumper along Milwaukee Avenue.  I'm talking buckets.  

The rain was letting up by the time I arrived to the scene.  The homeowner, a nice lady, came out to meet me and hand me an empty shoebox.  She then pointed me in the direction of the snake.  She refused to get within 10 feet of the scene and told me that getting those photos earlier took all of the courage she had.  I approached the garbage can, and watched in horror as the snake, still firmly pinned, struggled to surface under a steadily rushing torrent of stormwater as it made its way toward the drain.  

I wasted no time in lifting the full and VERY heavy garbage can up and collecting the snake.  It was definitely an amelanistic milksnake, either nelsoni or a bastardized mutt as some of these captive-produced morphs tend to be.  Skinny, limp, and lethargic, I didn't hold much hope for this one.  I put it in the shoebox, thanked the homeowner, and went home to put the snake into a darker and more secure enclosure it may quietly expire in.  I figured the internal injuries were devastating enough to render the snake doomed.  Then I returned to work and didn't think much about it.

When I arrived home several hours later, the snake was still alive, so I set it up in a small glass terrarium.  After a few days, I offered it food, which it eventually accepted.  I was still skeptical that it was a success story because part of its body had been smashed flat for at least two hours and I couldn't imagine that its organs would function properly.  But they did.  It accepted food each subsequent feeding (and pooped normally), though its feeding habit was odd.  I found that the snake would only eat if teased by the food item to the point of spastic throws of its body and manic zoomies around its enclosure for a minute, after which it would strike defensively and then hork down the food.

Someone else from the association reached out and asked me to speak to their meeting about the snake, and I used this as an opportunity to expand on the native snakes of Chicago.  A reporter from the Chicago Northwest Side Press was present and interviewed me after my presentation for an article that appeared on the front page on October 4 (slow news week I guess).  It's kind of ironic that I was referred to as a "lifelong Jefferson Park resident", when by the time the article was published, we were in the process of moving to our current home out in northwest DuPage County.

               

Shortly after the snake's rescue

Eight years later, the snake is still with us, living out its rather luxurious life along with a few other snakes in the house. Rehoming didn't make much sense - the story is too wild.