I went rattlesnake hunting last Saturday. Guided by Tom Anton, who works in the fish department at the Field Museum and pursues snakes as an avocation, I wandered through several forest preserves along the Des Plaines River peering under hummocks of grass and turning over logs. I am still trying to decide whether this was a rational activity.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Finally, moved by that deepest human terror, the fear of looking silly, I started to walk around with an assurance I usually didn’t feel. But along the Des Plaines last Saturday, I was deliberately breaking the rules of snake avoidance, going out of my way to get close to a pit viper. I was picking up large boards, two-by-tens and old sheets of plywood, and flipping them over. Sticking my hands–or at least my fingertips–under these boards to prize them out of the ground.
Our search was unsuccessful. We found three garter snakes–two with the opaque, sightless eyes of serpents about to shed their skin–one masked shrew, and lots of ants and other insects. But no rattlers. I was hoping Tom would find a snake for us and spare me the tachycardia that would follow my discovering one. But I was also hoping I would find one and establish myself as a fearless snake hunter.
Massasaugas have been unfortunate in their habitat preferences. In Ontario and New York they live in wetlands. Some hibernate under sphagnum-moss hummocks in northern bogs. They are excellent swimmers, as evidenced by their presence on islands in Lake Huron. Of course we know what has happened to most eastern wetlands.
There are definitely political considerations involved in putting a rattlesnake on the endangered list. Tell people there are venomous snakes in that forest preserve just behind their houses and many will start fantasizing about eight-foot cottonmouths coiled in the baby’s crib. Conservatives will have great sport with the airhead environmentalists who have all sorts of ideals and no common sense. The commonsense approach, of course, is to ruthlessly exterminate anything that might possibly annoy you in any way. As late as the 60s people were still running rattlesnake roundups in Wheeling.
Anton has been studying the snakes along the Des Plaines for years, watching their behavior and charting their movements using his ability to recognize individuals. His work will provide another insight into the complex workings of ecosystems, the real building blocks of life. But he can keep doing that work only as long as the ecosystem and all its parts continue to exist.
