Summer nights in a small suburb of Tucson, Arizona, way back in 1967, out of my house would stalk a mighty hunter. Six years old, wearing shorts and a tee shirt, high-top tennis shoes, and carrying a flashlight, a bucket, and a butterfly net, I stalked off through the streets in search of prey. It […]

Out lizard hunting one morning I saw a pair of very fast, thin snakes which crossed the dirt road in front of me, side by side, their heads held high off the ground. The two looked like a team, and this sent a thrill through me. I’d never seen snakes do this before. Their movements […]

One of the things they have in Texas that we didn’t have out in California are box turtles. During certain times of the year, when these turtles are feeling the call of nature and plodding about looking for love, they tend to wander onto highways with disastrous results. One of my in-laws at the time […]

In the summer between 6th and 7th grade, my friends and I had formed a science club. I think we called it the “California Science Association” or something like that. It sounded very official and looked good on a letterhead, and we were able to get a lot of free scientific samples and hardware by […]

Across the street from my childhood home was open desert, and when I was about 8 years old and was feeling the freedom of my first bicycle, my friends and I would go out and ride for miles down dirt roads that crisscrossed through the cactus and brush. We explored ruins of adobe buildings where […]

I remember “spiny lizards” from my childhood as these huge scaly lizards as long as my arm that took two hands to hold. For young lizard hunters in my Tucson, Arizona neighborhood, these were the big game trophies. I caught one once, but don’t remember the details. I just remember holding it squirming in my […]

I think I was about six years old when I began catching things called horny toads. Actually they’re lizards, not toads, and I what attracted me to them is they look like miniature dinosaurs. Unlike regular lizards, these have a round pancake-like body, and out the back of their heads sprouts a crown of horns. […]

Hey, you’re here just in time to read my very first post! I’m a writer and photographer, not a Herpetologist, though I wanted to be a Herpetologist when I was a teen. My hero was Dr. Robert C. Stebbins, author of A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians. That was my bible. I still […]