JOURNAL EMAILS:  Summer of 2005 Super Dave enlisted me for a few herp projects in the southwest US.

Sent: Sat, 06 Aug 2005 20:27:57  Subject: Love From the Desert

Dear friends: sorry to send out such a long and poorly edited group email but some of you asked what i was up to and i could always blame it on the heat stroke. feel free to fwd to anyone i missed and there is always the delete option

August 3, 2005

Hello from the desert. So a lot of folks asked me what is was doing this summer and I was kinda vague. Not in a "hey he's cool and free and may jet to some exotic country" vague but more like I am too busy with school and I have no idea what the hell I am doing this summer. Now I know many of you don't have time to read a long email so for those who have no time, no patience, no interest, too slow a computer or already know what I am up to here is the short version: I sailed for 2 weeks and now i am in Az checking out snakes, turtles and cactus.

For those with more time and/or interest:

All my summer plans crashed around mid-May around the time the NYS Biology Regents took over my life. In late June I learned some of my students passed the hell test and I was keeping my job and the sailboat our school programs for field classes was doing a university program and was short handed. So I got recruited (lied to about a science research gig on some islands by Cap. K) to crew the Lettie G Howard, an amazing 135 foot 1839 fishing schooner. I was ok not getting to play scientist but being a 38 year deckhand is not as sexy as it sounds so I was lobbied for an additional title, Ship's Naturalist, which came in handy at meal?s end to guide which waste went in the slop bucket. Fortunately the Boston University monkeys on hand to learn history and run around keeping the ship afloat had less experience then I did so I had someone to clean the soles of the galley with. We sailed to several historic ports around New England with an amazing and patient crew, and I learned a lot about how not to kill myself aloft, 93 feet in the air, underway in open water, standing on a 4 inch wide plank wrestling sails into submission.

I was home for a bit and got to see some of you lovely folks - congrats to Dan, former NYC HS teacher turned international educator of mystery, in from Bangkok and has scored a principal assignment in Barcelona, Spain this fall. After a few days of playing on my bike I packed up my gear again (some of it managed to get clean after weeks at sea in the same clothes) and flew to Tucson, Az to meet up with Super Dave (SD), mercenary wildlife field scientist extraordinaire. I met SD in Costa Rica 3 years ago where he was lured into La Selva Biological Station by my x-mentor and local cowboy Dr Sassa with the promise of big venomous snake studies. When SD arrived I was the only person in the field so he got to chase small frogs with a high school teacher from Brooklyn and be the most overqualified assistant to a wannabe researcher EVER. SD fortunately did get to see many venomous snakes as I stumbled around them looking for 1 inch fast brown frogs between trees, vines, logs and mud in a sea of brown leaves.

When Dave heard I was free this summer he invited me to his annual rattlesnake roundup - A chance for common folk to be involved in dangerous scientific research. SD did his Master?s thesis on a snake know as the Twin Spot Rattlesnake, native to SW Az and Mexico. They live mostly at high altitude on sheer faces of loose rock called talus and come out after cold rainy lightning storms. He realized this was so much fun and so under funded that he should continue to check on the snakes every year for the next decade or so without pay, credit or support and involve as many of his dumb friends as possible by promising them free beer and a "unique" camping experience.

Shockingly, I didn't jump at the snake gig but figured I owed SD for saving my project in Costa Rica so I expressed interest in a Desert Tortoise Project he was working on which sounded much safer. It seemed smart at the time, tortoises are bigger and slower than frogs and less bitey then snakes. My first day they went easy on me and we only did one shift of 5 hours searching, starting at 4 AM along a 2 Km death march through what they called a cool and breezy day of 5 mph wind and shadeless temps in the mid 90s wading through rocks and thorny cactus on my hands and knees looking in to dark holes for brown turtles and yes again, avoiding venomous snakes. Luckily most of the venomous snakes are too smart to be out in the heat of the day and by staying low looking for turtles I often avoid the Africanized bee swarms. I hear the thorns come out on their own after about a week.

Of course now that I was in Az it only made sense to join the rattlesnake round and get to check out the Chiricahua Mountains. Most of the roundup campers arrive on Saturday in time for dinner, car camp and take pictures of the snakes Sunday morning before they return safely to their homes. Dave had other plans for me. I was recruited to the pre-roundup roundup. This is the one where you backpack 7 miles up above 9000 feet to a remote site with no facilities, no trails and slim chance of survival. I was lucky again and wildfires closed the roads and delayed us a day so I could try to acclimate to SD feverish hiking pace. We left Monday and were up to the site in 3 hours and I was in pain. Three of us spent three days off trail on the talus slope looking for snakes dodging lightning and hypothermia. Since they are relatively small rattlesnakes (a factor that makes them extra temperature sensitive and interesting to study with regards to climate change) we don?t use anything to pick them up other than leather welding gloves. Word on the talus is they can?t bite through, fortunately I didn?t find any so I didn?t get to test them out. SD found 6 snakes so I did get to handle them why they were being measured and tagged for ID. The small size also attracts poachers who sell these snakes in the pet industry for big bucks, thus we keep this site secret and only refer to as the Farside.

After much rain and stumbling around the cliffs we hiked back down for a recoup at the lovely Wilcox Hotel 6 and grabbed some previsions and drove back into the mountains the next morning to a site called Barfoot which is more popular with the locals. Barfoot is a luxurious compared to Farside, it is not far from parking so you do not have to carry all your water, there are flat tent sites and there are picnic tables. We broke the Roundup weekend record and caught and processed over 25 snakes! There were gravid females and feisty males and 5 neonates (baby snakes). Good news was that I found the first snake; bad news was it didn?t count because it was the wrong species. I was very excited when I saw it coiled under a rock and heard the unmistakable rattle sound of a pissed off snake. When I went for it something seemed terribly wrong, I was only about 20 meters from the campsite so I yelled out the color and size. It was also about 4X larger than a Twin Spot and it was a good that I hesitated before I picked it up so my hands could still work for typing all these fun anecdotes. She was a beautiful 4 foot golden Molossus (Black Tail Rattlesnake) which happens to make sport of welding gloves. It turns out most folks found the right snake but I am apparently too sexy for those little snakes so I came up with the only 2 black tails of the weekend. Someone brought up a big lasagna Saturday night and despite the torrential rains we had a hot fire and a good time. We also got to report 2 potential poachers to the local Game and Fish people and all they got to leave with was a picture.

Me, Mike and SD were the first to arrive and the last three off the mountain after processing all the snakes, packing up and then my favorite part, releasing them. Finding the tags where people who were drinking beer all weekend had marked them on a map proved to be a challenge 400 feet up on the talus. It felt strange to carry rattlesnakes in a little bag on my back up loose rocks, but it was very special to see them undulate back into their holes, born free playing in my head. We got back late Sunday night and Boss Erin gave us Monday morning off.

Monday at 3:30 PM we were back in the Sonoran desert, Saguaro National Park, at about 2000 feet looking for tortoises. Fortunately we did Plots on Monday which means when you find your first tortoise in a designated 2 hectare area you are done. We hiked out about an hour and Dave found one in 3 minutes and we were off to dinner after 2 hours in the field.

The rest of the week was not so easy, up before 4 AM, on the trail at sunrise, temps above 105, and over an hour hike uphill to do Distance Sampling transect lines. I learned about Distance Sampling from SD in Costa Rica and it proves to be a good way of measuring population densities. For each location we do 4 transects of 250 meter perpendicular lines connected to make a 1 KM square. The problem is that the sites are mostly chosen randomly so you have no idea what the transect line will look like until you get out there. You must walk the entire transect, regardless of the terrain, at least twice and search around 5 meters to each side of the line. You count all herps (reptile/amphibians) found and process every turtle. Unfortunately some of our transects have been interrupted by rock cliffs which means you need to find a way down and then climb up the other side with a stupid tape measure and other useless to climbing science gear on your person. Transects also find their way through nice patches of cactus. My favorite is the Prickly pear which seems to have projectile thorns. SD rates the Cholla most painful. A fun little heat stroke game we play is "which plant will hurt the least" when deciding which way to squeeze through the brush on transect. We have found a tortoise each day and seen lots of cool lizards, Sonoran Desert toads, giant centipedes, woodpeckers, coyote, deer, jackrabbits and diamondback rattlesnakes to name a few. Many of the cactus are in bloom or fruiting.

Tuesday was exciting not because we got to wake at up at 4:30 Am, not because we had to hike mostly off-trail about 8 KM for about 7 hours of distance sampling to a remote site, and not because it was over 106 F, but because I found my first tortoise. She was over 8 inches and looked like she had teeth marks on her from a fight with a mountain lion. Despite her banged up shell she was in good shape and well behaved as we tagged her lucky number 801 and took her measurements and other exciting data.

I don't think y'all can bear more "herper" talk so I will bring this to a close. I apologize for the long drawn out poorly written paragraphs but the dehydration doesn?t make me very articulate. I am getting in decent physical shape trying to keep up with Super Dave. In addition to death marches, cool monsoon lightning storms, and critters, Tuscon has plenty of taco stands and live music so it has not been all pain all the time.

I am not sure how long I will survive this project but anticipate being back in NYC with some summer left. I have tons of good pictures and hope to post them someplace for those interested. Hope you are all well and sleeping late and keeping cool. Peace Roy Arezzo Deckhand, Ship's Naturalist, Turtle Jockey, Pin cushion, Snakebait

ps i hope to be off AOL in the fall please file rarezzo@newyorkharborschool.org

August 10, 2005

Hi all
Just a quick note that I am headed to New Mexico for a little over a week and will be out of email contact. I scored a new volunteer gig on
a cool lizard/snake grasslands project going on at a Ranch near the Mexican border. I will be tent camping but there is a cabin with a
bathroom, they feed us and it's a bit cooler temps. From what I hear it is lot cushier a work day then hiking through desert thorns for 7
hours. With the meteor showers coming up it will be great to get out of the city. I will be back in Tucson the weekend of the 19th and I fly
back to NYC on Monday, 8/22 and hope to catch y'all at some point before the craze of back to school starts up.

Sent: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 17:01:26 -0400
Subject: back from the ranch

   August 19, 2005 ~ last long email I promise (I can here that delete button a-clicking clear across the country)

  Howdy, just back from the Coberan Ranch formerly the Gray ranch in far south New Mexico, a huge piece of semiarid grassland acquired by
private ranchers from the Nature Conservatory with the stipulation that the cows behave and part of the ranch be used for research. Not sure
how long that will last. It is a wide open area with less cactus, more grasses, yucca plants, cooler temperatures (at around 5000'), rock
outcrops, rolling hills and mountains in the backdrop. The Mexican border is less than a mile away but all you can see is the majestic
mountain range that lies over the border. The "illegals" and drug runners sometimes drop by for water on their long hot walk to the
highway. Border patrol and local cowboys stop by from time to time to make fun of the fact that grown people are chasing around reptiles.
There are no towns for hours and only dirt roads on the ranch. We had well water, bathrooms, but no electricity. There were over 10 folks in
and out working on the various lizard and snake activities. We would start work around 8 am and have a nice siesta before picking it up
again before dark. Work days were not too intense and there were plenty of folks on the payroll to handle the workload. As a volunteer I mostly
got to choose my projects and there were times I was sitting on a rock reading or hanging in a beach chair have a cold one thinking this is
almost like summer vacation.

  On the ranch property there are 400 funnel traps (modified lobster cages) designed to catch snakes in 4 different pastures. There are
around 600 lizard pit traps (buried buckets) in 7 different areas. There is much data collected with regards to different soil types,
vegetation, burrows, and grazed versus ungrazed land. In addition there are a bunch of rattlesnakes with radio receivers running around that
they track to learn about thermoregulation, reproduction, home range and other misbehaviors.

  The lizard project was pretty easy work. Lizard Traps were set up in a grid about 30 meters apart and on any given day I had to check no more
than 60 traps which took about an hour depending on how many lizards I had to bag. We drive out and walk a short flat area and release any
critters that got into the traps by mistake. A walk in the park compared to the Saguaro tortoise project. Lizards were brought back to
the ranch to collect data, get tagged and then released back where they were caught. It was a little strange to be carrying around a cooler
full of lizards labeled in ziplock bags but the lizards didn't seem to mind. I think we processed over 150 lizards during the week. The worst
part was trying to save pointy critters like scorpions by scooping them out of the bucket.

  The snake traps were a little more of a concern because we had to remove snakes and any "bycatch" from the trap and these tend to attract
more bitey creatures. There were these small rats that were a hassle and I had a gopher snake or two throw a fit. There were some gorgeous
snakes like the longnose, patchnose, liar and the king snake, which makes its living eating poisonous snakes. The Coachwhips were super
fast, Garter snakes were a bit musky and of course there were plenty of rattlesnakes to handle. The tongs we use to pick up the rattlesnakes
fortunately are a little longer than the strike distance on an adult snake, if you grab it someplace mid-body. Of course sticking them in a
pillow case and tying a knot is a different story. It was tough keeping track of all these bags of snakes but the ones that rattled were
approriately tagged with a " HOT" label. I have no idea how many snakes we handled but while I was there they caught snake number one thousand
since the project began several years ago and we found the longest Hognose snake in the New Mexico Records. All of these milestones were
met with appropriate celebrations. Most of the snakes we worked with on the ranch are considerably larger then the twin spot rattlesnakes we
worked on in Az, (which made the local papers!) thus they are put to sleep for a bit to be processed. There is nothing comfortable about a 4 foot rattlesnake sleeping on the table with its head facing you.

  There are plenty of diamondbacks about (know to herper geeks by the species name atrox) but we only track the prairies, AKA Western Rattlesnake or Crotalus, viridis. There about 15 animals with radio transmitters in them and I was able to assist on the surgery for some
new ones. They are not too aggressive a snake but since they camouflage in tall grass they tend not to rattle so not to give away their
position. This seems polite but when walking through tall grass looking at a GPS, listening to beeps and carrying a 3 foot long antenna you
much rather have a rattle warning then a bite as the first indication you have stepped on a snake. Fortunately the only snake I almost
stepped on was on the move instead of coiled and thus I got a rattle warning from about 6 inches away. Finding the snakes is not always easy
but we get to see how they spend their summer vacation. We found one gentlemen caller guarding the burrow of a female we were tracking with
8 babies coiled underneath him. Being the breeding season we found several out on dates and we brought back one gravid female and we were
fortunate enough to witness her give birth to 10 neonates in a container back on the ranch (rattlesnakes do not lay eggs).

  I spent my free time reading and playing washers, the southwest version of horseshoes. Entertainment included pooping in the field
stories, nighttime toad hunting, and dinner around the fire. I got in some nice hikes over the hills and watched the dry sandy wash behind
the ranch turn into a raging river after a big thunderstorm. I also got to do a road-kill dissection on a diamondback and have a nice skin to
show for it. Hopefully the carcass sitting on the anthill will be reduced to bones soon and mailed to me before school starts. I have
more critter pictures than should be allowed by law.

  On the drive back we stopped in the town of Rodeo, NM for pizza and beer. Special thanks to Kevin, lead researcher, for the ride and the
opportunity to be out there. Sympathy to Brett who is still out there alone doing most of the work 10 people did leisurely for the last week.

  Back in Tucson I did my bittersweet last day in the field. We didn't catch any tortoises although we hiked a beautiful section of the park
and I saw my first Gila Monster! Coolest lizard around and one of only 2 species of venomous lizards in the world. It was about a foot long
and thick with a cool black and orange pattern. Being fresh back into town I got to do the late shift which meant not having to wake up at 4
am and watching the sunset on the hike back. There was also dinner and parting gifts to which I am very grateful ~ thanks Erin.

  Saturday after I remove the last of the thorns from my legs we will celebrate at the local fetish ball and then I am off to the big city. I
will be home next week and then hope to squeeze in a last sail on the Lettie over the weekend before the insanity of unpacking my classroom
and start of school. Soon y'all be complaining it's too cold so soak up that sun
Roadkill Roy

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