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Trying to Save an Old Con Artist

By Bryn Nelson | Staff Writer

June 29, 2003

On the morning of June 9, a small group gathered to witness the release and subsequent surveillance of four captives at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Which is good news if you're a hognose snake.

The week before, veterinarians from the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo had surgically implanted a small Tootsie Roll-sized radio transmitter and laced a foot-long thin wire antenna beneath the scales of four hognose snakes recently captured on the lab's pine barrens property.

By setting each snake's transmitter to a different frequency and using a radio receiver with a fold-out antenna to locate those signals on a regular basis, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Jeremy Feinberg and his colleagues at Brookhaven said they hoped to learn more about the range, behavior and hibernation of the once-common hognose snakes -- information that may teach researchers how best to protect the remaining habitat of a reptile in decline. A 10-year census ending in 1999 found only three hognose sankes in Queens and 14 on Long Island.

For the first release, Feinberg drove to an unusual habitat enclosed within a large circular physics installation at the lab. From a cooler in the bed of his truck, he retrieved a white pillowcase occupied by the smallest of the four snakes and led the group on foot toward the edge of a pitch pine stand.

As summer intern Kristine Hoffmann began setting up a small radio antenna reminiscent of the rooftop variety, Feinberg called out the snake's tracking number: 271. No. 271 was already well into one of its famous defense mechanisms, a fake death routine. Once on the ground, the snake continued the charade with a loosely coiled death pose -- belly up, mouth open and tongue lolling.

"Of course, he's peeking at us, making sure we're still a threat," Feinberg said, bemused. After a few minutes, he moved the limp snake to a bed of dry pine needles just within the edge of the trees. The snake would right itself and glide away once the danger had passed, but now it lay in a heap, motionless at first except for its flickering black tongue, and then a partially raised head that allowed it to peek at the perceived threat with a blinking eye.

At a second site not far away, Feinberg removed a larger hognose from its flowered pillowcase confines. Instead of feigning death, however, it wriggled impatiently in his grasp.

"This one's pretty confident and not feeling threatened by me," he said.

Feinberg released it and it paused momentarily before slithering through a mossy spot and disappearing under a mass of drying grass, hidden from all but the chirping radio receiver locked onto its transmitter frequency.

The remaining two snakes did likewise, saving their death scenes for another day and instead slithering away to familiar haunts.

Gone, but certainly not forgotten.