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The Night Has A Thousand Peepers

© Steven H. Yaskell

It's a reptile-and amphibian-poor part of the United States, is Massachusetts. Ever since St. Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland, and Hawaii considered itself serpent-free, this has been a good thing. Yet given the abundance of blood sucking or otherwise chewing, stinging, nettling and in some cases just plain-old-fashioned biting insects our North Shore is wont to contain o' a spring 'n summer, we'd be better off with a few species of lizards around here (we have none). More frogs and toads wouldn't be bad for that matter. Heck, toss in a few more turtles, salamanders and even a couple more snakes why don't you? (Not the poison ones, please.)

All these eat their weights in insect matter, larva and adult. Destruction of mice and rats is another bonus, plus rotting things, plant and animal. This is the primary reason why destroying reptiles and amphibians is not smiled on, especially as indicated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Agricultural value of certain toads and frogs, say, is in the hundred to thousand dollar level in terms of insect pests consumed, alone. No, they aren't dirty and slimy and no, they don't spread any disease: they are disease-spreading vector (mosquitoes, flies, cockroaches, rotting flesh etc.) controllers, much in the way small predatory mammals like skunks are. Being free of rabies, they are even safer, still. They can spread Salmonella if they are held captive in filthy conditions, then handled, with contact to the mouth from fingers, etc. Reptiles and amphibians like to be clean or at least prefer clean conditions if obtainable; yet they give the opposite impression from viewing them in the wild. They are internally very clean animals that master life in what we often consider filthy conditions. Overall, considering their looks and place in nature, they are unusually polite and respectful creatures with a unique, ornate beauty resembling fine china or porcelain. Having kept and raised them as a kid, I know all this for fact. However, unless raising them for return-to-the-wild projects (requiring licenses in some cases) it is not wise to keep these souls captive. We need them in nature: not in livingrooms.

Life for the reptile and amphibian scientist (herpetologists) on the North Shore is considerably neater - classification-wise- than elsewhere. As for those studying serpents and salamanders in the Amazon rainforest, well, just forget it. As soon as they classify some frogs, a few new subspecies are created. And when they finally list all the subspecies there, a new species is discovered. Then they wonder about any subspecies of the newly discovered species and so on. You get the drift. So, northeastern herpetology is a stately, tidy affair.

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