A Word About the People that Brought You This Blogger...

Baker's Cat Eyed Snake - Aruba

As noted in my introduction, I am attracted to natural objects because of my father who was a well known naturalist in his time.  My nephew, who is very much like his grandfather in his aptitude for esoteric research, found a scientific paper on the internet that we think my father didn't even know about!  To back up, my father was born in 1889 and attended the University of Michigan where he obtained his Ph.D. in zoology, specializing in invertebrates specifically land snails.  His mentor was a man by the name of Dr.  Alexander G.  Ruthven who later became president of the university and for whom the natural history museum at Michigan is named.

Evidently my father went on a field trip to Aruba in 1922 and came back with snakes.  I remember him telling stories of bringing back a suitcase full of live snakes from Mexico about 1912 and terrifying the Customs officials but guess they let him bring them back.  So this trip was more of the same.  My father loved to tell these stories when we were younger, always laughing at these as he told them.  Seems that one of the snakes that he brought back from Aruba was a new species and Ruthven named it in his honor in 1936.  It still remains today as a separate species and is pictured above.   I can't believe my father would not have mentioned this if he had known!  My daughter jokingly said that some familes have a family crest but we have a family snake.  

It should also be noted that my father named close to 300 species of snails and one of the last new species he named was  my mother's name (Bernadine) right before they married!  So I have some invertebrates in my pedigree -- thanks John for unearthing this esoteric factoid!  The link is The Article.