The Calusa Herpetological Society                                               Of Southwest Florida

Jessica Upton

I am the current Sergeant At Arms of the Calusa Herpetological Society.  That means I get to yell at people & beat them up if need be. 

 I was first introduced to reptiles through my uncle Joe who worked at Cypress Gardens & Silver Springs.  He was the rattlesnake handler & also did the snake talks & demos.  One Easter my cousins & I were hunting eggs; I was extremely competitive so when I saw color I just grabbed & ran.  Well my uncles were famous for hiding eggs in holes & hard to reach places so I scrambled from one gopher hole to the next like a woman on fire trying to accumulate more eggs than my cousins.  I spotted one & grabbed it quickly realizing that there was something attached.  It was a hognose snake.  I was a little reluctant to let go, but since I really didn't know what it was, I dropped it & hollered (I'm southern, so it's acceptable) loudly for my uncle Joe.  He laughed (a lot) at all the relatives who were freaking out by this time.  Then he got that poor snake to drop the egg & put on a show.  It was one of the wildest things I'd witnessed & I figured the snake was dying from a heart attack as it writhed about & turned its cloaca inside out.  My uncle assured me it was fine & moved it to the back of the property so it could relax & go about its business.  But mainly because if he had left it, my other uncle would have done it in for real.

My first kept snake was a corn snake that my mother found in a bush.  I put it in a jar with cedar shavings & called my uncle to find out what to do next.  Good thing too as he informed me that cedar was not the bedding of choice for snakes.  Through the years I have kept many different reptiles such as chameleons, iguanas, geckos & tortoises, but snakes are my thing.

Currently I keep a breeding pair of horned vipers, one of their 2003 offspring & a golden hypo bull snake.  I really enjoy field herping, but rarely get to do so as most of my herp friends get up way too early in the a.m. for me to join them.  Also, it's just too darn hot! 

I have also assisted Bill Love with his reptile photography.  Being able to handle so many varieties of reptiles is one of my best experiences to date.  I really enjoyed the mambas & cobras we worked with, & it's cool to be part of the process from setting up backgrounds to testing my luck with fang-proof gloves. 

I am a hobbyist & I like it that way.  I don't care to turn something I enjoy into work.