Northern Woodlands

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Timber Rattlesnakes in Vermont & New York: Biology, History, and the Fate of an Endangered Species

Every once in a while, a book comes along that defies categorization. Such is the wonderful, slithering conundrum that author Jon Furman poses for booksellers with his Timber Rattlesnakes in Vermont & New York.

Its title and 208 extensively footnoted pages argue for placement on the shelf with other nature guides. But there are easily a half-dozen reasons Furman’s book deserves a much wider readership, not the least of which is its stunning cover photo of a yellow-morph timber rattler, its fierce glare through yellow-slitted eyes striking us – as it were – with fear, fascination, and repulsion.

This is anything but a guidebook in the conventional sense, though Furman has documented in remarkable detail the lives and habits of a shy creature you may never see. We learn how timber rattlers mate, hunt (using smell and heat with scary efficiency), bite, and “envenomate,” how long they live (up to 30 years), and how big they can grow (a fat 4–5 feet long).

Furman’s extensive research unveils many surprising facts: that the rattlesnakes migrate back and forth from long-established communal hibernation dens to favored summer basking knolls and shelter rocks, and that at the northern edge of their range they don’t begin reproducing until around 10 years of age.

Yet in the most fundamental way, Furman has written an anti-guide book: he goes out of his way not to reveal where timber rattlers can be found, to protect an endangered species from those who would hunt them illegally or capture them for sale.

What Furman has crafted – it took him five years of extensive research, interviews, field work, writing, and rewriting – is nothing less than a remarkable snake stew, a blend of history book, field trip, old-fashioned yarn, ecological and biological study, mythology, and sociological treatise on the evolution of our attitudes toward Crotalus horridus, as it’s known in the Latin taxonomy.

Furman takes readers on many interesting side trips. His detailed description of how the rattlers’ venom works and stories of those who have been bitten are spellbinding in a horrible way.

Equally riveting are his tales of the literally snake-bit community of rattler experts, ranging from enlightened natural biologists and preservationists to brazen bounty hunters. From 1895 through 1971, timber rattlers in Rutland County, Vermont, and Essex, Warren, and Washington Counties, New York, were decimated by a small band of intrepid bounty hunters whose stories and portrayals provide one of the most interesting themes in his book – and no small dose of irony. On the one hand, folks like New York’s Art Moore – Furman says he was the most prolific bounty hunter ever, with 15,000 dead rattlers to his name – helped to virtually wipe out the species. On the other, Moore and kindred spirits like the legendary Bill Galick of Rutland County were prodigious naturalists who gained an encyclopedic knowledge of their prey and, in some cases, a curious affection for them, despite many sweat-inducing tales of close calls and actual bites. (There are two nauseating photos of what a snake-bitten hand looks like.)

In telling their tales and feats, Furman dishes up a delightful slice of the Northeast’s vanished past and captures the shifting cultural views of these venomous creatures over the span of a century, from pest to an animal worthy of preservation. In a fine twist, Furman relates how Bill Galick’s property, with its excellent snake habitat, ended up being preserved in 1989 by The Nature Conservancy, thanks to the efforts of Mark DesMeules, one of a small band of enlightened and foresighted individuals whose snake advocacy receives long-overdue recognition in the pages.

As Furman emphasizes and anecdotally documents over and over again, timber rattlers are nonaggressive, shy creatures designed to kill mice and other rodents, not large humans. When human deaths do occur, it is often an allergic reaction at play combined with human folly, such as using rattlers in religious rituals.

Furman’s book greatly advances our knowledge of these misunderstood creatures, who now inhabit only a small physical realm among us yet live large in our minds and fears.

“My attitude toward these beautiful and potentially dangerous reptiles, which have long held their place in the forests of America, is that we should understand them, respect them, and leave them alone,” he concludes in the book, calling them “symbols of our rapidly vanishing wilderness.”

A version of this review appeared previously in The Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus.

Andrew Nemethy

© 2009 by the author; this article may not be copied or reproduced without the author’s consent.

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Wilderness Partners: Buzz Caverly and Baxter State Park

Any reader might well ask, on first hefting this 586-page book, “Isn’t it too long?” This reader’s answer is an unqualified “No.” I can’t claim I read it in one sitting, but if things like eating and sleeping, feeding the cat, and filling the woodbox had not interfered, I would have.

Because this book chronicles Buzz Caverly’s entire career, from his first summer as a greenhorn ranger in 1960 until his retirement in 2005, it is not only a biography of Buzz but also a history of the park for those 45 years. Histories can be dull slogging, but this biographical history (or historical biography) is a page turner because it has all the elements of a good novel. The first and most important of those elements is a strong central character, Buzz himself. A farm boy from Cornville, Maine, Buzz was lucky enough to encounter two sources of inspiration early in his life, and he remained toughly, tenaciously loyal to them as he worked his way up through the ranks to eventually serve his last 25 years in the top position of director of Baxter State Park.

The first source of inspiration was Mount Katahdin. When Buzz’s family moved north from Skowhegan to Enfield and he spent his last year of high school at Lee Academy, Buzz would often take time off from his studies and hike up to the fire tower on nearby Rollins Mountain. It was from that vantage point that Katahdin became more than just a pretty sight for him and he first felt “inspired in my heart and soul.”

His second source was Governor Baxter, who persisted for over 30 years in acquiring – piece by piece – the lands that now make up Baxter State Park. Buzz met Percival Baxter during his first summer at the park, and the young ranger’s admiration for the man and for Baxter’s vision of the park as a sanctuary to be kept “forever wild” would become Buzz’s guideposts throughout his career.

Defending Baxter’s legacy was Buzz’s sacred mission in life. How he remained true to that mission in the ever-shifting political landscape – whether fending off initiatives to widen the park tote road, or converting the once private camps at Kidney Pond to simpler, public accommodations, or dealing with myriad other problems of the changing times, such as overcrowding, snowmobile use, and military training flights over the park – makes for a story rich in suspense and human drama.

The book takes its title from a note that Governor Baxter sent to Buzz in 1968, in which he wrote: “We are partners in this project.” Percival Baxter and Buzz Caverly are, each in their own way, heroes in the cause of wilderness in Maine: Baxter for creating the park, Caverly for defending Baxter’s “forever wild” imperative against all comers and continuing to advocate for it now in his retirement. Also deserving of the title “wilderness partner” alongside Buzz and Governor Baxter is, for my money, Phyllis Austin, who has held high the wilderness banner both during her long career as a reporter and now with this monumental, diligently researched, and thoroughly engaging tribute to Buzz Caverly. Percival Baxter, Buzz Caverly, Phyllis Austin – wilderness partners indeed.

Robert Kimber

© 2009 by the author; this article may not be copied or reproduced without the author’s consent.

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Summer World: A Season of Bounty

Research suggests that female wood frogs exercise no choice in their mate; rather, the male frog “chooses” them. “Why then,” Bernd Heinrich asks in his new book, “do male wood frogs call out?” In Summer World: A Season of Bounty, Heinrich, biology professor emeritus at the University of Vermont and author of 13 other nature books, answers this and other intriguing questions.

The wood frog question was prompted in part by something he witnessed on a rainy April night in 1995: hundreds of wood frogs hopping across a patch of highway in New Hampshire, while Heinrich was on his way to Maine. Over the next few springs, Heinrich studied wood frogs, noting how scores of males would arrive at a vernal pool on a particular night and jam, physically and vocally, along the banks. A female would arrive and one of the males would latch on to her. The pair then swam to a spot where her eggs could be released and fertilized.

After researching and observing the wood frogs, Heinrich surmised that male wood frogs call out because more voices make for a louder message that travels farther out into the woods. Maybe it’s like the boys at the fraternity house turning up the music to let the sorority girls know where the action is, Heinrich says.

Throughout Summer World, Heinrich takes readers with him as he attempts to solve puzzles like this, often with experiments. Are birds capable of learning to hunt for caterpillars by using caterpillarcaused leaf damage as a tracking clue?  Why doesn’t the maple sugar borer multiply until the food supply is exhausted?

Heinrich tempers academic prose with anecdotes. During his study of bald-faced hornets, he flees to his truck as they attack “like Sidewinder missiles.” Heinrich occasionally reaches for the broad brush to deliver a nature lesson, as when he describes how humans and other creatures have evolved over millions of years. But mostly he just sticks to science up close.

Unlike Henry David Thoreau’s ruminations on ant warfare, Heinrich doesn’t offer up allegorical insight when he witnesses ant battles. He counts the ants, follows them 250 feet along their narrow trail, witnesses black queens being mugged by a gang of reds, and watches as black ants submissively allow red ants to carry them off to a red colony. Thoreau, the social critic, suggested humans are like mindless ants with their shared desire for armies and combat. Heinrich, the scientist, wonders what the heck is going on. He excavates a red ant nest to learn all he can.

After several summers of ant study, Heinrich acknowledges that his findings are not original. “… But no discoveries can be made without exploring, and thanks to my ignorance, I had been lured to try. I had fun. I learned much about ants, and they had helped make several summers special.”

Summer World is Heinrich’s instructive reminder that paying close attention has its own rewards.

Dirk Van Susteren

© 2009 by the author; this article may not be copied or reproduced without the author’s consent.