Reptiles

Last year Baltimore City paid vendors more than $800 million, much of it for construction projects, gas and electricity, trash and recycling services, transportation and the like, according to monthly figures posted on a city website. But some purchases look odder than others, at least at first blush: Frozen mice. A mink coat. Paintball. About $27,000 worth of food from S'ghetti Eddie's for the Fire Department. Those spending details and many others emerged during a Baltimore Sun review of the city's 2012 figures.

Last year Baltimore City paid vendors more than $800 million, much of it for construction projects, gas and electricity, trash and recycling services, transportation and the like, according to monthly figures posted on a city website. But some purchases look odder than others, at least at first blush: Frozen mice. A mink coat. Paintball. About $27,000 worth of food from S'ghetti Eddie's for the Fire Department. Those spending details and many others emerged during a Baltimore Sun review of the city's 2012 figures.

Those who have any doubts that reptiles are the hot pets of the '90s need look no further than bookstores, where the second issue of Reptiles magazine has just landed.Reptiles is the latest in the Fancy Publications family of animal magazines, which already includes Aquarium Fish, Bird Talk, Cat Fancy, Dog Fancy, Horse Illustrated and Wild Bird, as well as the trade publication, Pet Product News.Responsible care is the motto of these magazines, and they deliver on the promise every month with a good mix of stories designed to offer something to both novices and experienced animal-handlers.

- The volunteers of the Maryland Amphibian and Reptile Atlas project leave no log unrolled, no stone unturned in their quest to document the state's dirt dwellers. When the earth is moist after a soaking rain and the temperatures whisper spring, the herp patrol - short for herpetology - spreads out in search of slithering, hopping, plodding critters along the fringes of farm fields, sunning themselves on pond rocks and making new burrows at the edges of vernal pools. These amateur census takers aren't picky.

Michael Francis Groves, a well-known Maryland herpetologist and former curator of reptiles at the Baltimore Zoo, where his career spanned more than four decades, died of cancer Sunday at his Eldersburg home. He was 84. Known to generations of reptile lovers as Frank, he was born in Baltimore and raised on Covington Street in Federal Hill. He spent his boyhood in pursuit of snakes, amphibians and lizards that inhabited nearby fields and streambeds. "When he was a kid, his boyhood room was filled with snakes.

REBECCCA Williams (that's right, her name has 3 C's) enjoys what might seem like an unusual hobby: Learning about and caring for reptiles and amphibians. Although some children run when they see snakes, Williams as a young girl was fascinated. Next week, the 20-year-old Four Seasons woman will share her enthusiasm in a presentation at the Crofton Library called "Revealing Reptiles." Williams' first pet, Barnaby, was an African clawed frog she got when she was 5. Fifteen years later, Barnaby is a healthy, happy member of the Williams home.

After waiting in a line of about 30 children to touch a black rat snake named Bugeye, Emily Dietz stepped right up and trailed her fingers down the reptile's scaly back. "I like to touch snakes," the 8-year-old said during a recent program at Marshy Point Nature Center in Chase. "I think snakes are one of the coolest animals around." Emily's reaction was an example of one of the two opposing inclinations visitors typically have toward snakes, said Bob Stanhope of the Marshy Point staff.

With the reptilian heart as their guide, surgeons are using lasers to drill holes in the human heart in hopes of relieving chest pains that have no other remedy.The experimental treatment, which has its roots in the 1950s, is based on the way blood circulates through the hearts of reptiles -- through holes rather than discreet arteries and capillaries.Patients undergoing this latest form of laser surgery suffer from coronary blockages that are too extensive to benefit from conventional therapy such as bypass surgery, angioplasty and medication.

For the diminutive Egyptian tortoise, the Reptile House at the Baltimore Zoo may now be a more congenial place than back home on Egypt's Mediterranean coast.Herders, pet traders, farmers and developers have wiped out the species in Egypt, and it is vanishing in Libya and Israel. In this decade it has become the most endangered of the world's turtles, and one of the most endangered animals of any species.But in Baltimore, the zoo crew has turned a closet full of plastic tubs and electric lights into one of the most successful nonprofit Egyptian tortoise nurseries in the world.

A lifelong romance with snakes and horned and leathery creatures may not seem to project the proper image to launch a love story.So this story will open, instead, at a gun show in 1991, when Tim Hoen, surrounded by machine-gun cartridges and small arsenals for hobbyists, heard a voice say: "Wouldn't it be great if these 300 tables had captive-born reptiles on them instead of guns?"It was as if someone had whacked him on the head with a hammer."This is a beautiful thing," he says.Few would understand.

Ever wonder which animals get the most love at the annual Mid-Atlantic Reptile Show? Poison dart frogs, corn snakes and lizards are typically the most popular, according to Tom Hoen, the event's founder. These particular creatures are sought after because they're in vogue at the moment — such as the poison dart frog — or they come in a wide variety of colors, such as the corn snake or leopard gecko. Despite the name, poison dart frogs aren't poisonous, so long as they're fed the proper diet, Hoen said.

Maryland Natural Resources police have interviewed the young fisherman who reported spying an alligator in the Patapsco River. And they say they believe him. But a preliminary search of the area late Monday failed to turn up any further evidence of the tropical reptile. "We believe the gentleman. That's why we sent an officer out to investigate," said Sgt. Art Windemuth, spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources Police. Animal control officers also joined the search. But no alligator appeared.

Sue Muller carefully scraped the dry dirt from a spot along Columbia's Lake Elkhorn walking path, using a small garden trowel and a water-filled spray bottle to soften the earth until she saw the white of turtle eggs peeking through. The Howard County naturalist kept at it, slowly carving out the rectangular hole painstakingly dug two weeks before by a ridge-backed turtle of a species normally found along the Mississippi River. Muller stopped for a time to invite passers-by Lucas Julian, 6, and his mother, Irene, of Clary's Forest to watch and learn, but then returned to her main task.

After rubbing snouts with his girlfriend and showing off his dance moves, the male poison-dart frog let loose a mating call that made his bright yellow-and-black underbelly pulsate. Even though he and the object of his desire each weigh less than an ounce and are a mere inch or so long, the frog's alluring trill filled the humid air in a small renovated barn in Ellicott City. "Poison-dart frogs are very social creatures," said Sean Stewart of the pair, whose courtship rituals will be repeated by other amphibious couples living inside the 100 clear plastic terrariums at Herpetologic, the frog and snake "farm" he owns.

A herd of goats coming to the rescue of a handful of imperiled turtles may sound like the plot of a Saturday morning children's cartoon show, but that's just what's happening in the Carroll County town of Hampstead. The State Highway Administration has enlisted the help of about 40 goats to devour invasive plant species in wetlands along the path of the soon-to-open, 4.4-mile Hampstead Bypass to protect the habitat of the bog turtle - a species listed as threatened in Maryland. State highway officials decided to give the goats a tryout as four-legged lawn mowers rather than to attack the unwanted vegetation with mechanical mowers that might have killed the diminutive reptiles or damaged their boggy habitat on the fringe of Hampstead.

Environmental activists have a new weapon in their four-year-old battle to stop homeowners in a waterfront corner of Severna Park from building private piers: a spotted turtle. The reptile - which animal conservation groups list as a "threatened" species because of its declining population - was discovered May 31 near Sullivan Cove on the Severn River, which is at the center of an impassioned and complicated land dispute that reached the highest court in Maryland.

We had just walked through the turnstile, putting us inside Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp Park, when Younger Daughter gestured toward one of the rangers and whispered, "He's missing two fingers on his hand.""That's a good sign," I said.My daughter frowned and kicked me in the knee.Now before you, too, think me callous, let me explain. I was a man on a mission. My mission was to see an alligator. In the wild.Since you almost never hear of alligator sightings along, say, the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania, it was clear we were going to have to head south.

Think of it as a sort of Cosmo for the scaly set. There are beauty tips ("Unravel the Mysteries of Skin Shedding"), health reports ("Constipated Iguana?") and a dollop of sex ("Start Your Own Rodent Breeding Colony") -- not to mention a centerfold of a naked green lizard.It's Reptiles magazine, a slithery pet pub- lication that just celebrated its fifth anniversary.Reptiles is actually a fairly serious, straightforward magazine for owners of coldblooded creatures. But it's dressed up with clever headlines, colorful graphics and even a few celebrity interviews, like with Guns N' Roses guitarist and reptile lover Slash and NFL linebacker Chad Brown, owner of a reptilei-ibreeding business.