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Dick arrived in town just as I got off from work on a Saturday. We met in
Bullitt County and began hunting.
Dick identified plants and birds as he rolled logs in search of salamanders. His craggy white-haired form seemed to be made specifically for this very task.
We soon found a copperhead, an intergrade
milksnake, a black racer, and a worm snake. They were all wonderful specimens. |
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 Intergrade milksnake |
 Racer |
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Our spirits were up, and on the way out of the forest I heard the call of a strange bird and asked Dick if he knew what species it was. He told me he needed to get a look at it to tell me. With that said he stuck his tongue out of his mouth and began to make a raspy sound. Within seconds a bird flew down from the forest canopy and landed on the nearby branch of a sapling.
Dick continued his rasping while the bird looked at us, seemingly as
bewildered as I was! It soon began to reply to Dick’s calls with chirps of
its own. Dick and the bird seemed to have a bit of a discussion, after which
the little avian flew off. When Dick told me the name of the bird I did not
even hear him. I was awestruck! |
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We then decided to call Mark. He just happened to be in the area and directed us to some of his tin sites.
We found a ring neck snake, a black king snake, and a hognose snake. We soon realized that it was midnight, but we were having so much fun that we decided to continue. |
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Honestly, there was never a dull moment. We made fun of each other the entire time. I soon convinced our group to check out some tin sites that I knew about. I told ghost stories the entire time and convinced them that we had driven for two hours on a hunch I had been given by the boyfriend of my cousin’s sister-in-law’s nephew!
All we found was a Dekay’s snake, but Dick had arrived in Kentucky! By 4 a.m. we had run out of
tin. We decided to call it a night as Dick was giving the KHS a presentation the
next day. |
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After flipping logs all of the next day and then giving a presentation, Dick
asked if Phil and I would be interested in driving to Eastern KY to find a duryi. We obviously were, and left as soon as our meeting was over.
As we drove through the Gorge and surrounding areas, Dick told Phil and me
about some of the finds he had made in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. It
was then that I realized that Dick was not the 50 year old man he appeared
to be! |
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We must have checked 3000 seeps without seeing a single salamander. We did
find some mountain chorus frogs in a road rut. With no rain it seemed
hopeless that a duryi would be found, so we decided to flip some tin even though it was 2
in the morning! We asked Dick what he thought, and he told us we might have some
luck if the sun happened to shine.
Well the sun didn’t show, but 16 snakes did!
We found two eastern milk snakes, copperheads, water snakes, dekay’s snakes, and
a monster-sized garter snake! However, still no duryi so we left the gorge with
our tails between our legs like beaten dogs. |
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Garter snake We made it to the entrance ramp of The Mountain Parkway at around 3 a.m. and stopped at a gas station for some sustenance. Phil was disappointed because the gas station had hotdogs but no squeeze cheese. Phil really likes his squeeze cheese. We were able to get Ale 8 One sodas and had just opened them when rain began to hit the windshield.
No one spoke a word. We all understood what had to be done. Dick started his
truck and we winded our way back into the gorge. |
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Once we were back it seemed like a horrid joke was being played on us. The
roads were covered with Northern red salamanders!
None of us had ever seen so many of these secretive woodland inhabitants. The problem was that from the truck they all looked just like Kentucky spring salamanders! We had to stop for every single one of those guys. After jumping in and out of the truck 957 times we were all beat and it was nearly 6 a.m. |
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Honestly, there had been at least 3 dozen. We became so frustrated that we jumped out of the truck and went for a walk in the down-pour, flipping everything in our path. We were soaked through. At one point I saw a KY spring salamander dart under a boulder larger than a semi truck. An attempt to move it was completely hopeless. I did not have the intestinal fortitude to even mention it to my companions. And so we left. You would think that we would have been content with finding so many Northern reds, but we had been searching for a target species to photograph and none of us had photo one. We had failed. And so at 8:00 a.m., after 48 hours of ceaseless hunting with perhaps 5 hours of sleep, Dick drove straight through to Virginia and Phil and I drove back to Louisville. In Lexington Phil and I began to fall asleep. We rolled down the windows, blasted horrible music, and finally resorted to punching each other. Despite these methods I fell asleep at the wheel at least twice, but we somehow made it home alive. After a bit of rest the reality of what had happened became clear to me. I had pushed myself to my own personal limits. These limits paled in comparison to those of an old white-haired field herper who talked about making finds over forty years before I had even been born! Despite 48 hours of near solid hunting, Dick drove 8 hours to Virginia where he gave another presentation and then rolled more logs and flipped more stones. Friends, that is hardcore, and it became all to clear that I was but a boy. |
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