Word: gila
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Love Me, Love My Boa. In Carlsbad, N. Mex., District Judge C. Roy Anderson recessed the divorce case of Charles and Dale Wright when the couple could not agree on the value of their common stock: two cobras, two boa constrictors, one anaconda, two eagles, one hawk, four Gila monsters, one owl, five donkeys, two chimpanzees, two African lions, two mountain lions, two lynxes, three raccoons, one coyote, one porcupine, one skunk, one South African rattlesnake, and an unspecified number of Southwestern rattlesnakes...
Herpetologist William H. Woodin III of Tucson, Ariz, is devoted to one of the oddest of odd scientific occupations. Last week he was scurrying round the desert taking the temperatures of Gila monsters...
This involves a tricky operation. At this time of the year, the Gila monsters (thick-bodied venomous lizards with skins like orange and black beadwork) avoid the summer heat, come out only at night. So Woodin hunts them at night by jeep. After the sun has set, the monsters like to lie on the pavement, enjoying its lingering warmth. Woodin steps up to the beaded, venomous patient, pins its neck down with a forked stick, and, with practiced skill, slips a specially made, quick-registering clinical thermometer into the beast's rectum...
Scientist Woodin does not limit himself to Gila monsters. He has taken the temperatures of 5-ft. rattlesnakes, fringe-footed lizards and venomous coral snakes. After he is through with a patient, he gives it an identifying mark in case of a future encounter...
There is plenty left to do; Arizona has some 50 kinds of lizards and 70 kinds of snakes. But the Gila monster remains his favorite, partly because so little is known about it. Hardly anyone, for instance, has ever seen a Gila monster egg or a baby Gila monster. Woodin hopes that his studies of the monster's habits will lead him to the secret nests where the monsters are hatched...