HARTSBURG — Fifteen-year-old Jonathon Thomas was only 9 when his father, Ross Thomas, began taking him to a nearby cemetery to catch snakes.
“It was just for fun,” Ross said. “As a hobby and for science projects.”
“I really liked them,” Jonathon said of the garter snakes and bull snakes that were a part of their catch-and-release project.
The Thomases would measure the snakes, weigh them and determine their genders before returning them into the wild.
Fascinated with herpetology, Jonathan bought a couple of just-hatched corn snakes, three or four inches long, to keep as pets.
“Then he started to do research,” Ross said. “He learned about their dominant and recessive traits and what genes they carry.”
Encouraging teacher
As a fifth-grader, Jonathon said he got a lot of encouragement from Hartsburg-Emden science teacher and fellow herpetology enthusiast Tony Ziemba.
“He raises snakes inside the school,” Jonathon said. “He started breeding them. I thought that was really cool.
“I started breeding my corn snakes. From that, it just really took off.”
Jonathon also breeds rats and mice to feed the snakes. To help support his hobby, he began selling his excess rodents to Donna Lewis at Pet Connection in Lincoln.
When Ziemba decided to take a trip, he asked Jonathon to watch over the Hogg Island boas in the school science lab. He warned the young snake-keeper that the boa was about to drop babies.
“He gave me the key to the school,” Jonathon said, “and I took care of them when they were born.”
For his trouble, Ziemba gave him one of the dwarf baby boas. That particular kind of boa is extinct in the wild. However, it can be kept in captivity because its small size makes it easier to manage than a full-sized boa. Nevertheless, it will reach five to seven feet in length.
Web site
Next, Jonathon created a Web site, hartemherps.weebly.com, where he lists all of the snakes he and his friends have for sale. The site also gives tips for snake care and has a gallery of snake photos.
Along with collecting snakes, the young herpetologist has learned to breed them for color and pattern. Both traits can make a big difference in the price collectors will pay.
Jonathan displayed a “$25 snake” and a “$75 snake (a ‘lavender’ corn snake named Violet)” to illustrate the difference.
His newest venture is king snakes, the snake with the most sub-species.
He keeps Brutus, his black-and-white king snake, in an aquarium under his bed. He also has an albino king snake.
The other snakes, except for the boa, live in the basement, in plastic containers with air holes punched in the sides. Jonathon designed a wooden rack to hold the plastic bins, compete with heat tape to keep the tubs warm. His father helped him build the rack.
The boa, which needs a warm and humid environment, lives in its own aquarium with a water bowl, where it likes to lounge.
Ron, Jonathon’s sire corn snake, once got loose and was lost in the house for two months. Jonathan finally found him curled up on a board near the ceiling in the corner of the basement. He expected the big rusty-colored snake to be starved, but Ron was full of mice.
“He had done the job the cats wouldn’t do,” Ross explained. “At the same time, our mouse problem disappeared.”
No dangerous snakes
From the start, Ross made his son promise not to bring any snake into the house that could kill any of the other pets or harm a family member.
Five or six times a year, Jonathon will get a call from someone who’s alarmed about a snake in the yard.
“He will catch it and relocate it to a wilder area,” Ross said. “Someone found one in their basement, and we’re keeping it until spring to release.”
As enthusiastic as he is about the snakes, Jonathon said he probably won’t pursue a career in herpetology. He said most of those jobs deal with venomous snakes. He isn’t interested in working with the dangerous breeds.
Instead, he plans to earn a degree in biology with a teaching certificate.
The young herpetologist recently spoke to a class at Lincoln Junior High School about breeding snakes for specific genetic characteristics.
“I really liked doing that,” he said. “I’d like to do more programs like that.”
Nancy Rollings Saul can be reached at 732-2101.
On the Net
More information is at http://hartemherps.weebly.com. Snakes available currently on the Hartemherps Web site range in price from $125 to $350.
Read the original article from The State Journal-Register.
