snake wranglin' in mexico

i worked with a phd candidate from notre dame studying the endangered ridgenosed rattlesnake (crotalus willardi) in northern mexico near agua prieta (lower right corner of map) in 2004. the abstract: the forest service was designing a fire management/species recovery plan for some land in arizona and wanted to understand the snakes survival and response to burned areas. but because the snakes are extremely rare on the american side but somewhat plentiful on the mexican side of the border they had to send us across to find a large enough sample population. we had a couple different plots: frequent fire presence, sporadic fire presence, and control as well as different forest types.

the crew included kirk sester, the phd candidate, estrella, masters student from mexico, three other mexican students. the typical day was a drive to a remote canyon, park and split up to hike the narrow ravines looking for well-camouflaged venomous snakes, sounds smart right. the easiest way to find them is to listen for a rattler underneath your foot, im not joking these boogers are well camouflaged. they are this beautiful light pinkish-purple and black. which when you think pink you dont think blending in but...



when this is the habitat you understand



our tools of the trade were a pair of 20" tongs and a handful of pillow cases. we would find a snake, catch it with the tongs and ease it into the sack, tie it off, record gps coordinates and habitat composition. next came the crazy part, the other crew members would tuck the knot of the sack under their belts, essentially resting the snakes on their thighs as the bumped and bounded their way through the canyon for the rest of the day. at first i was hesitate about going indiana jones style for the sake of science but it was the only way to keep your hands free so i too ended up doing it. which on a good day you could have 3 or 4 venomous snakes gently bouncing on your legs for 8 hours. but no one was ever bitten, move over southern baptist snake handlers and indian cobra charmers theres a new sheriff in town.



"back at the lab" came the processing of the snakes. we implanted a radio chip, the size of a grain of rice, so that we could relocate them with telemetry equipment to track movement. we also took blood samples to determine genetic variance from the american group.






to handle the animals we would slide them into a sealed tube with a chemical that would sedate them, after a couple minutes they are like play-doh.



we werent opposed to using child labor for this dangerous work either, just kidding this is the daughter of the ranch family that worked the canyons in one of the plots


we also worked with the non-venomous arizona mountain kingsnake (Lampropeltis pyromelana)






ridgenosed rattler caught after a meal

ridgenosed rattler after eating a bird i suppose check out the feather in the mouth