Celebrating Bud - Reptile Stories

When Bud and I started dating, 49 years ago, the subject of Reptiles never came up!  When our two sons were 5 and 6 years old, he did capture blue belly lizards for them and they all tried several times unsuccessfully to incubate eggs the lizards would lay in captivity. 

Eight years into our marriage, he still had not shown an interest in snakes until we spent 18 months in Colombia, South America as general helpers to Summer Institute of Linguistics. They develop written alphabet for language groups around the world that still only have a spoken language & then translate the Bible, health booklets, etc. and teach literacy classes, but usually are to intellectually busy to have time for general maintenance. Bud worked as a Honda mechanic (their mode of transportation) and he helped in their general maintenance department.  Bud became friends with a Linguist who collected insect, amphibian and reptiles, when he was working in the jungle on his assigned tribal language, for the Museum of Natural History in Arlington, Texas. That’s the first I knew Bud had always been interested in snakes.

Our friends worked 3 months in their tribal group and three months back in the main administrative compound which had a substantial lake, swamp and jungle on site. When they were home, J.K. started taking Bud into the local swamps at night to collect frogs. They would wade out waist deep, turn off their flashlights and wait for the frogs to start calling. They would then turn their lights in the direction of the frogs, startle them and usually capture a few. Bud did admit it took him several times in the water before he quit worrying about an Anaconda or Cayman having them for dinner!

Once Bud had gained knowledge of local snake species, he started retrieving snakes from member’s homes and yards and saved them for our friend to prepare for transport to the museum. (We have been retrieving Kern county reptiles from local homes and yards for over four years and I just now realized that was something Bud had done in Colombia over 30 years ago. No wonder he took to it so easily here!) There weren’t published Field guides in Colombia, so Bud relied on our friend to learn the new species. One afternoon, our gardener told us there was a ‘bad’ snake in our yard. Bud captured it and presented it to J.K. when they returned home. It was the only time I knew J.K. to lecture Bud sternly!  It turned out to be the largest Colombian Coral Snake ever recorded and there was no anti-venom in the country. J.K. would not have captured it alive, but he did prepare it for the museum and it is still on display in Arlington, Texas as the largest known Coral snake found in Colombia and listed as collected by Bud James.

The other reptiles Bud spent time with in Colombia were the Cayman. The teenagers on the compound always needed a chaperone to go Cayman hunting at night and they had scarred off most of the adults on site, but Bud thought it sounded like fun. By then he had overcome his fear of the swamps so he was game to follow the students lead. They would stand on the shore with their flashlights looking for the reflective eyes of the Cayman. When they saw a pair of eyes 8 inches or more apart they knew they had one that would provide a good meal (they really do taste like fried chicken). They would shoot between the eyes and wait for the critter to sink, and then stomp out until they found it with their feet and bring it up. A couple times the Cayman was not dead and it scared them but fortunately no one was ever injured.

A visiting pastor was a big game hunter and wanted a hunting experience in Colombia. So Bud took him Cayman hunting as I described above. The next morning that minister was our guest speaker and he started his sermon by pointing to Bud and saying, “Bud James is crazy! He tried to kill me last night!” He did get his Cayman however, and provided a funny story for Bud to share for years to come.

After returning to California, Bud allowed our boys to keep an occasional snake they found in the fields of Grover and Pismo Beaches, because there were no venomous ones around. I still didn’t like them and was always ‘shook’ when the gopher or sand snakes escaped from the boys makeshift cages. One never attacked me, but I did worry about it a lot! He taught the boys about snakes among other things, but didn’t show any personal interest having them as pets.

Bud and I did not become a ‘snake loving’ team until we moved to Bakersfield in 1990. We had inherited our oldest son’s Boa Constrictor when he started commercial fishing, but its care was mostly Bud’s responsibility. I enjoyed watching it kill and eat rats, but didn’t make any contact with it. Soon after we moved here, Bud found a California Long Nose Snake on the road at night, coming home from work in the oil fields. It was a rainy night and Bud brought it in the house cupped in his hands and said he had a present for me. He told me not to be afraid and I finally trusted him! It was awesome to hold her in the palm of my hand and let her warm up. She was gravid and laid 8 eggs that all successfully hatched. In no time we had 30 snakes of various species and Bud was teaching me (a 55 year old woman) to work with them for the first time.

After he joined the Al Robbins Herpetology Society, Bud went on a few snake hunts & sighting excursions, but soon discovered his real love was taking our snakes to local schools, the Summer Library Reading Programs, the street fairs in the summer, birthday parties, churches, scouting events and any other place he could display our snakes and share about their conservation and their value for the environment. Bud became very aware of the great opportunity to teach others about snakes and that became his passion.  I often teased him about developing reptile qualities! Each year he seemed to get a little more ‘coldblooded.’  He also had a very quick capture technique he used on non-venomous snakes. He would get their attention with one hand and before I realized he was moving the other hand, he had the snake behind the head. I don’t think he was ever as quick as a striking snake, but he was getting very good!

Many of you know he was bitten by a rattle snake last year, while responding to a ‘snake in yard’ call in an old residential area in town. The family thought they had seen rattles, but the snake had crawled up in a very dense decorative bush to get away from their barking dog. Bud could not see the head, tail or contour of the body, but the markings told him it was either a rattlesnake or a gopher snake. He could not get the tongs or hook in the dense foliage, so he moved the family out of the way and decided to use his rapid hand movement to grab the snake out of the bush and toss it behind him so he could then identify it and take appropriate measures to properly contain it for relocation. He forgot about his watch and it caught in the bush, giving the Northern Pacific Rattlesnake an opportunity to strike and envenomate him 3 times with both fangs, but he recovered after 18 vials of anti-venom without any long-term damage.

His knowledge and expertise was a work in progress and he never tired of learning new things about the snakes and better ways to care for them.

Several people have shared with me how Bud developed their interest in snakes and often gave them their first one (since we kept the adoption snakes in our garage) and that he would always patiently answer any question they had about the care and feeding of their ‘critter’. As I have thought about this, I know he would want me to remind you he didn’t always know how to care for snakes and other reptiles and he got his start by being willing to ask questions of Al Robbins, Tim Haub, George Handley, Lloyd Klingenberg and others along his journey and he continued to do so. I would encourage you to share your knowledge and love of reptiles with those around you.

Shirley James/Bud’s wife