You're Gonna' Get Bit!: Harrowing Tales of Herpetology

By Mark Ferdinand

From chasing frogs as a child, to milking venomous snakes for a living, Mark Ferdinand explores a lifetime of tales from the world of reptiles and amphibians. Whether it's a quest for his first turtle, keeping crocodiles in his closet, or chasing snakes around the workplace, You're Gonna' Get Bit! has a story that all "herpers" and nature lovers can relate to and enjoy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Ferdinand
• Release date: Jul 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370646036

Mark Ferdinand

Mark Ferdinand lives on the South Texas coast with his wife, daughter and son. Fishing the surf, hunting, gardening, carving, auto and home repair occupy his spare time. He has written on the topic of autism spectrum disorder from a father's perspective in parenting articles and in other non-fiction venues. Having limited typical communication skills, his son introduced Mark to new ways of interpreting his needs and aspirations. As his son grew older Mark became fascinated by the story potential within these amazing children. This prompted the creation of a dynamic adventure story focusing on a character with autism. After completing his first novel, Fortune on the Spectrum, he decided to compile a group of lifetime stories that brought him to the unusual occupation of snake venom extraction called You're Gonna' Get Bit!: Harrowing Tales of Herpetology. Corpus Christi author and Texas author Mark Ferdinand. Mark writes novels with autistic characters, Texas fiction, and true tales of reptiles and amphibians.

Book preview

YOU’RE GONNA’ GET BIT!

Harrowing Tales of Herpetology

Mark Ferdinand

YOU’RE GONNA’ GET BIT!

Harrowing Tales of Herpetology

By

Mark Ferdinand

Copyright © 2016 by Mark Ferdinand

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

Mark Ferdinand is also the author of the autism adventure novel,

Fortune on the Spectrum.

Thank you for the work you do, Doctor.

I’m not a doctor, but you’re welcome.

Part I

A Place to Hunt

The red spitting cobra just looked at me and stared. It was one foot away from my face and I had surprised it as much as it had surprised me. Everything about this morning was normal and mundane, but in this situation I found myself in, all was highly out of place.

Close calls were nothing new in my time dealing with reptiles and amphibians. Some were more dangerous than others. I like to think I learned something from each one, but these are soulless and often unpredictable beings I deal with. Anything can happen.

I don’t even keep many animals at home anymore. My days of being blindly obsessed with reptiles and amphibians are somewhat behind me. I now settle for one sixty-gallon tank in the living room that has a small ecosystem of fish, newts and frogs in it. Yes I still enjoy upsetting the modern purists in small ways!

My interest in animals started early as it does with countless children. I longed for the first time that I could visit the zoo and my first visit to see dinosaurs at the museum. I was fortunate to be raised on weekend visits to the mountains at the family cabin. Here I could stalk and capture critters to my heart’s content.

In this area we had Lithobates pipiens, formerly known as Rana pipiens (Yeah just when I had a handle on the scientific name someone had to go and change it). We had leopard frogs, OK?

Also prevalent were Thamnophis radix. It took me a while to research which exact species of garter snake we had in my area growing up. See how passionate I am about such things? I finally settled on the Plains Garter Snake.

These two herps kept me busy for the first six years of my life. I started to get bored of them though. They became old hat to me. You always want what you don’t have, and I wanted a turtle.

I became obsessed with turtles. I checked out every book on turtle topics at the library. My mother recognized my interest in them and bought me more books and more turtle knick-knacks to put on my shelf, but there was no actual turtle.

Turtles were not found at the high elevation that our weekend getaway was. I looked at the field guide maps and they showed that no less than three types of turtles could be found in that part of the state. Liars!

I needed to find a turtle. Fake turtles and turtles in books just weren’t cutting it anymore. The mountains were proving fruitless, so I needed to search in low country.

Our home was near the foothills of Northern Colorado. There were ponds there that one could explore, but none were close to my house. At one point a family friend took us to Miller Park and Miller Pond where a turtle was found by a group of older boys, but I was not old enough to remember much about the outing. I sure remember the turtle!

As I got a bit older, I got more mobile with the help of a Huffy bicycle and the freedom that kids in the summers of the 70’s and 80’s enjoyed. Be back before dark was the only rule at that time.

Unfortunately there was no Google Maps or any easy way to find ponds and streams and the like. Local knowledge was not very productive on turtle ponds. We would have to go by rumor and legend. Only a very small elite handful of older kids shared in my interest, and most of them would safeguard any secrets they had of such places.

I finally had an in when my older brother started hanging out with a guy from a neighborhood a few miles away. They both liked playing the drums and the two of them were able to assemble an entire set with the equipment they owned put together. Each had one drum stick as I recall, drum rock legends have started this way I’m certain.

The friend was named Dave. I think you will find that a few guys attached to my stories were named Dave. In some cases I am withholding the actual name of a person, but at very least the real individual has a one-syllable name. Either way, Dave is a solid name for a guy, and a perfectly believable name for a guy that is in to herps.

In addition to playing the drums and aspiring to rock legendry, Dave was a guy interested in turtles and frogs like me. Dave knew the lay of the land and he knew where the turtles were. Since he was hanging out with my brother, he shared a couple of precious town secrets with me on turtle locations.

He explained why not to even bother with Miller Pond. The turtles generally had an easy escape from being captured, and the city would not allow a kid to be wading around in the pond or setting traps. One could only see the occasional turtle basking in the distance before plunging to safety if threatened.

He clued me in to an unknown pond located behind a junkyard. It was an old gravel pit without a name and it was not known or used by the general public. There was no public parking and it would have to be accessed by bike and then on foot. Perfect!

If I didn’t have turtle-fever before, what happened next launched me into a frenzy. Dave had something to show me. He took me out to his back yard to a shed. He had a key ready and removed the lock. He opened the door, and on the ground near the shed window were two small