Finally! Back about eight years ago I bought five hatchling marginated tortoises from Mark and Kim Bell.

They were pretty babies, and since first seeing this taxon about 40 years ago at Arsene Eglis' facility, I had always intended to work with them (a 40-year hiatus between the initial decision and the actuality isn't too bad, is it?).

The babies thrived, growing quickly, and it took only a three years before I was able tio determine the genders -- four males and one female (4.1 in herp parlance).



Fast forward to 2012. The tortoises were now each a bit over a foot in length. I had placed two males in new homes, retaining the biggest and most boisterous for what I hoped would become a mini-breeding program. The possibility that this would become fact was shown when in late 2012 the female laid her first eggs. The clutch was small and the eggs were infertile.

But then a year later, in September of 2013, again the female began searching for a nesting spot.



Once finding a suitable spot, the nesting was fast and 10 eggs were laid.



Now for the long wait!

Although it is quietly hued, the little Hispaniolan cat-eyed snake, Hypsirhynchus ferox, is both attractive and interesting.


Inhabiting a wide range of habitats from xeric to mesic, this terrestrial snake seems to prefer areas where low escarpments and boulders are prominent. Preferentially a lizard eater, juvenile snakes eat geckos, anoles and the young of larger lizards. Adults feed upon larger whiptails and curlytailed lizards.



This snake occasionally attains a length of 30 inches (rarely an inch or two longer, often a few inches shorter). It is slender and can move quickly.

The Hispaniolan cat-eyed snake is only rarely available in the American pet trade. It is an easily maintained oviparous snake, but I have not been able to find mention of breeding success.

Although they were long considered a subspecies of the European four-lined rat snake, the Bulgariian rat snake is now considered a full species.

My Bulgarian rat snakes are just about three years old now, and three-and-a-half feet in length. I expect they will eventually attain a length of five feet.



I haven’t tried to push the growth of these rather heavy bodied snakes and they are, apparently, a normally slow growing taxon. Of the twospecies of the genus Elaphe, in Europe, the Bulgarian (also called the Eastern European or blotched rat snake E. sauromates) is the less colorful and undergoes the fewest ontogenetic color and pattern changes. In fact, when discussed, it is often said that this species retains its juvenile color and pattern, this being numerous dark olive gray to charcoal blotches against a ground color of straw yellow to olive. The head bears a dark "V," point forward. It is an attractive snake but is in no way flamboyant.

They are nervous snakes (and were especially so as hatchlings), but in the time I have had them neither male nor female have made any effort to bite. Neither are they confident enough of my occasional overtures to accept thawed mice from my hands. But both eat readily when each is gently moved to its own five gallon bucket containing the proffered meal, this now consisting of two extra large mice given at seven to 10 day intervals.

Bulgarian rat snakes have a reputation for being difficult to breed in captivity even when offered a three to four month period of hibernation. Although I am not altogether sure the snakes are quite big enough, I hope next spring, that if they are sexually mature, to to prove this wrong. The hibernaculum is ready and waiting and the snakes seem suitably heavy and very healthy. Wish us luck with this.

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Marfa, Tex., is about 1,400 miles from my home. So there and back is 2,800 miles, plus 500 or so miles for road-hunting side excusions. That adds up to around 3,400 miles total.

I had two questions before I left. One, would my little 4-cylinder 1996 Toyota RAV survive the trip, and two, would I survive the trip?

Guess what? The car and I both made it -- both a bit worse for the wear, but the entire trip was accomplished in three-and-a-half long days (and nights).

Why did I want to go to Marfa? Merely to see and photo desert box turtles, Terrapene ornata luteola. A decade earlier, Kenny Wray and I had traveled a roadway near Marfa during a rainstorm and had encountered numbers of desert box turtles. I had wondered over the subsequent years whether they were still present, and hoped to find out.



I crossed the Pecos River, the dividing line between the ornate box turtle (to the east) and the more westerly desert subspecies I sought. Only a couple of hundred miles were now between me and my destination. Three hours later I rolled in to Marfa, to be greeted at motel check-in by darkening and lowering clouds. Moments later, back on the road, I was enveloped in the first of several hellacious thunder storms containing road-obliterating rain.

The road I chose to drive was already awash, and the temperature was about 65 F. There were also acres of shallow standing water on the bordering prairie (now pastures) through which the roadway ran. A half mile up the road, there in the downpour, sat an adult female box turtle. Two miles further was another. Then on my return, I saw a beautiful male. Three more female box turtles followed, two on the second run and one on my final run of the day.

The next day, during more severe thunderstorms and temperatures in the low to mid-60s, 1.12 additional box turtles were found. Some were drinking from roadedge puddles, others were foraging for insects in the tall roadedge grasses. At about 5 PM, the sun broke through the heavy storm clouds. By dark the roads were again nearly dry and what water had been standing on the prairie had soaked completely in.

It was dark, I was cold, wet, hungry, and happy to have learned that this box turtle population still seemed secure. A night’s sleep, an attempt to see the eerie “Marfa Lights” (they were very active) and I’d be heading back to Florida before dawn.

More photos under the jump...

I can’t remember in what book I first saw a picture (a colored drawing, not a photo) of a European four-lined rat snake, but I do remember that I was still in elementary school when I learned of this snake.

The picture was of a large adult --pale body, the namesake striping dark and precisely defined. I thought the snake, although quietly colored, was a thing of beauty. And somehow, through a subsequent lifetime that has involved herps, invertebrates, fish, birds, and mammals, whenever rat snakes were discussed, at some point in the conversation a vision of this species, Elaphe quatuorlineata, has always popped up.

Despite the memories, it was actually about 65 years after seeing the drawing that I first saw this taxon in life -- in 2011, to be exact. After having tried and failed to acquire a pair of this European beauty over the years, I finally succeeded in getting three hatchling males from a German breeder.

As with many of our American rat snakes, the hatchling four-lines were very strongly blotched and gave no indication of the future lineate pattern. Today, the snakes are about three-and-a-half feet long, and the juvenile blotches are much less evident, the stripes are easily visible.



I have been promised a captive-hatched female from the German breeder in the spring of 2014 and am anxiously awaiting its arrival.

More photos under the jump...

The ornate box turtle, Terrapene ornata ornata, is the more easterly and northerly of the two Western box turtle subspecies. It ranges in suitable habitats (and disjunct populations) from northwestern Indiana to southeastern Wyoming and then southward to the Pecos and Rio Grande Rivers of Texas and eastward into southwestern Louisiana.

The easternmost range of the desert box turtle, T. o. luteola, begins at the Pecos River of Texas From there it ranges westward to southeastern Arizona and southward to northern Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico.

Of the two, the ornate is usually the darker, the more contrastingly marked, and, having nine or fewer radiations on costal scute number two, the less busily patterned.



From the desert box turtle side of the slate, at adulthood this latter usually has a muddier colored carapacial ground color, the light markings are less precise, and the busier pattern consists of ten or more radiations on carapacial scute number two.



Intergradation is well documented in a wide swath on both sides of the Pecos. Males of both subspecies have red irides. The irides of females are white.

Both subspecies of the western box turtle are strongly insectivorous, seemingly with a preference fof orthopterans (grasshoppers and crickets).

Desert box turtles often hunt down their orthopteran prey by walking slowly along the edges of roadways where the grasses are tall and the grasshoppers plentiful. I have watched them sidle along an inch away from and angled 30 to 45 degrees toward the overhanging road-edge grasses. A quick dart of the head and a grasshopper "bit the dust." The turtles seemed quite at home with this strategy and very successful in catching the insects.

I have also observed western box turtles (both subspecies) eating roadkill (lizards, anurans, rodents, lagomorphs, and spiders). It seems that olfactory senses play some part in finding dead items, for on one occasion I watched an insect-hunting female pivot suddenly while in insect-hunting mode and run almost 18 inches onto the pavement to consume a recently killed spadefoot.

Sadly, as seen by occasional box turtles that have themselves been traffic victims at other roadkill, eating roadkill places the turtles at considerable danger from traffic.

I don’t remember exactly how large these were when I got them. Seems that a carapace length of 2 or 2-and-a-half inches would be about right. Today, after five years with us, they measure in at about 10-and-a-half inches, and they’re still growing.

"They" are a pair of Asian giant wood turtles, Heosemys grandis. And I decided to get them because of fond memories of Henry.

Henry was the largest (straight measure carapace length of 16-and-a-half inches) and bulkiest Asian giant wood turtle I had ever seen. He was also the most arboreally inclined. And before I realized his arboreal inclinations, he escaped the large outside turtle pen twice.

At first I thought he had merely climbed the fence. Many "wood" turtles of several species are adept at this. I thwarted this possibility by nailing a several inch overhang all along the top of the fencing. But then Henry disappeared again. Some apartment-dwelling neighbors found Henry several days later nestled on the second floor in a corner of the stairwell. Thankfully he was returned. Whether he climbed or was carried was never actually determined. But we think he climbed.

Why do we think that? Simply because several months later, Henry disappeared again. We tried and tried to find him, but failed. Then one day he reappeared in the yard. Hmmmm, I thought, someone had found him and brought him home. A couple of days later Henry disappeared again. And we were just about to discontinue the search when a shaking in the center of a clump of Areca palms in the turtle yard drew my attention. And when I finally looked up, there sat Henry. He had found a half dozen trunks growing closely enough to enable him to wedge his shell between them and inch his way upward. There he sat, looking as if he belonged, about 15 feet above the surface of the mounded palm cluster. And over the years, until one of the palms died and it was no longer possible for him to climb, Henry would periodically return to his tree house.

The giant wood turtles I have now don’t seem to have any arboreal tendencies at all. But neither do we have clumped Areca palms growing in the pen nor are the turtles yet fully adult. Time, I guess, will tell.

More photos under the jump...