CO-OP PEOPLE

Woodchucks (bottom left) and chipmunks (top) emerge from their long winter’s sleep in March, and spring peepers start their, well, peeping. It will be only a few at first, but their chorus will gradually rise to a roar from swamps and marshes by late month. At other more temporary wetlands called vernal pools, “mole” salamanders (bottom right) in untold numbers make their annual breeding trek under the cover of darkness on the first relatively warm, rainy nights.

Woodcocks arrive in March, too — the males “peenting” and sky-dancing at dusk and dawn, trying to impress the females (I’ll be writing in-depth next month about these odd birds that appear to have been put together by committee).

Eagles (top) and owls are already nesting, and hawks are about to.

Vultures — turkey vultures (bottom) and black vultures — will be tilting in March winds as they soar aloft. For a splash of color on the bland, brown forest floor this time of year, look for scarlet cup fungus (middle) growing on hardwood branches fallen

from trees.

Co-op member is one of the state’s top experts on reptiles and amphibians.

STORY AND PHOTOS BY W. H. “CHIP” GROSS

There are countless unique ways to earn a living in 21st-century America, but not many more unusual than that of a professional herpetologist. The study of amphibians and reptiles, herpetology deals with wild critters that lots of people find repulsive. Even Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), the father of modern taxonomy, described them as “so foul and loathsome that our Creator saw fit not to make too many of them.” A few folks, however, seem inexplicably drawn to snakes, lizards, turtles, frogs, and their ilk. Greg Lipps, a member of Tricounty Rural Electric Cooperative in northwest Ohio, is one of them. “I grew up in Cincinnati, where my father owned a pet store and delivered supplies to other pet stores,” Lipps says. “I rode along with him whenever I could and was always fascinated by the animals in the various shops we visited — particularly the reptiles and amphibians.” Lipps was so taken with wildlife that he actually attended high school at the Cincinnati Zoo. “At that time, the zoo had a work-study program where I and a dozen other