Adventures in the Wild: Tales from Biologists of the Natural State

The Sears Craftsman Wooden-Handled, Four-Pronged Potato Rake

The Sears Craftsman Wooden-Handled, Four-Pronged Potato Rake S TA N L E Y T R AU T H WHAT’S THE MOST essential tool for any field biologist, especially a herpetologist, to possess? It is a tool for lifting rocks, turning rotting logs, and, as I discovered, digging lizards out of their winter burrows. The four-pronged potato rake is the ideal tool for these uses, but not just any potato rake will do. I have purchased many potato rakes over the course of my thirty-five years of studying amphibians and reptiles, and only one potato rake can withstand the use and abuse inflicted by a field herpetologist. Only one potato rake can flip sixty- and eighty-pound rocks without breaking a tine or its handle. That special, essential potato rake is the Sears Craftsman wooden-handled, four-pronged potato rake. I always tell my students in herpetology and natural history that this is the tool they need to purchase. Students, however, in an attempt to save money, first buy the cheaper brands; then when those break on the first field trip, they make the trip to Sears to purchase the real thing. I first discovered the utility of the potato rake just prior to beginning my doctorate at Auburn University. I was planning to study the reproduction and demography of Aspidoscelis sexlineata, the six-lined racerunner. As their name implies, these lizards are almost impossible to catch by hand. I had previously used a noose on the end of a fishing pole to catch collared lizards, but because of habitat differences for the two species, that technique didn’t work for capturing racerunners. I tried using bird shot and a 22 pistol, but hitting a green target moving through green weeds 155 and grasses wasn’t always possible, and the moving target wasn’t the only problem that I encountered. Since roadside clay banks make ideal racerunner habitat, I often walked along the sides of highways with my pistol drawn. Twice in one year, once in Arkansas and once in Missouri, local law enforcement officials asked me to follow them to their offices so they could run the serial number on my pistol. In the fall of the same year, after the weather had turned cool and the lizards were no longer active, I stopped at a clay bank outside Fayetteville, Arkansas, and for no particular reason, I decided to dig around in the clay. Lizards began to tumble out of their hibernation burrows. I knew I was finished sitting in sheriffs’ offices and hunting lizards in the summer when they were active. I could recognize the kind of clay roadside banks that A. sexlineata was likely to inhabit, and now I knew that I could dig their cold, lethargic bodies out of their hibernation burrows in the winter even when the ground was covered with snow. My potato rake and I were an immediate success. I became so good at recognizing A. sexlineata habitat that at two out of three locations, I would hit a lizard burrow with the first 156 STANLEY TRAUTH The authentic Sears Craftsman wooden-handled, four-pronged potato rake. PHOTOGRAPH BY STANLEY TRAUTH. dig of the potato rake. I ultimately dug over two thousand six-lined racerunners out of their burrows in twenty-two states. In south Texas I discovered a previously undescribed subspecies of A. sexlineata, now A. sexlineata stephensae, which I named after my mother-in-law because she had generously provided funding for me to visit south Texas. I also discovered that if I picked the correct site, I could dig out A. sexlineata eggs during the spring and summer months. Once in Alabama I dug out a clutch of southern fence lizard eggs that were being phagocytized by sarcophagid fly larvae. I later found additional clutches in Arkansas that were being consumed by larvae of the same fly; I found one clutch on Petit Jean Mountain and a clutch at the same site in Randolph County on the same date in two consecutive years. Since I was now consistently able to dig out clutches of lizard eggs, I decided to investigate whether or not lizard eggs were being phagocytized by the red imported fire ants in Alabama. I dug up thirty-six clutches of The Sears Craftsman Potato Rake 157 The Sears Craftsman potato rake and a bag of cold, lethargic racerunners just removed from...