The Turtle Gatherer of the Bronx (Via HerpDigest)

The Turtle Gatherer of the Bronx
by Vincent M.Mallozi
June 30, 2010, City Room Blog of NYTimes

One of Erik Zeidler's subjects. Mr. Zeidler, who just graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, won a young naturalist award for his survey of the snapping turtle population in the Bronx.

Erik Zeidler arrived at the New York Botanical Garden on a recent Friday afternoon, carrying in his backpack a notebook, a hanging scale and a tiny saw.

Mr. Zeidler, 18, who just graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, made his way down a grassy embankment along a stretch of the Bronx River just north of Fordham Road and began pulling several large, cylindrical nets filled with snapping turtles from the shallow water.

"I punched a hole in peanut butter jars, filled them with carp and put the jars in the nets as bait," said Mr. Zeidler, who had left the nets out the night before. "I trapped a dozen turtles, which is an average day's catch."

Mr. Zeidler, who has been studying snapping turtle populations at five locations in the Bronx during the past year as part of a school project, picked up one of them and examined it briefly before dropping it in his backpack. He attached the scale to the backpack, and scribbled "32 pounds" into his notebook. He pulled out the turtle and used his saw to notch a small number on its shell.

"This is to help me keep track and recognize individual species of turtles," he said. "This particular turtle has a bent tail. It could be the result of a bite or some genetic deformity."

Last summer, while most of his friends were lying on beaches, going to Yankee games or tooling around in their first cars, Mr. Zeidler spent his days kayaking on the Bronx River, or on the lake at Van Cortlandt Park, aboard an inflatable raft in search of his slow-moving subjects. He also spent time sifting through shallow ponds in Pelham Bay Park to conduct research for an essay he wrote, titled "Investigating the Ecology of Chelydra S. Serpentina, the Common Snapping Turtle, in a Highly Urban Setting."

"I want to be a herpetologist," he said, referring to the branch of zoology regarding the study of reptiles and amphibians. "I don't have many friends into this kind of stuff, and some of them think I'm strange, but I have a girlfriend and I used to wrestle in high school and I love hanging out and playing sports; it's just that I enjoy being around reptiles."

In June, Mr. Zeidler was one of 13 aspiring scientists from around the country chosen by the American Museum of Natural History as a winner of its Young Naturalist Award, given to those students who submitted the best detailed and analyzed scientific investigations.

"We received over 850 essays," said Rosamond Kinzler, the executive director of the National Center for Science Literacy, Education and Technology, which helped judge the contest. "Several elements of Erik's work really stood out, including the amount of effort and time he put into his essay and the fact that he used techniques on par with scientific surveys."

According to Mr. Zeidler's mother, Eileen Zeidler, her son had charted a course for a different kind of academic voyage long before he boarded his inflatable raft.
"When he was just 1½, I was strolling him along a fishing dock in Florida when he leaned out of the carriage, reached into a bucket full of live bait and pulled out a mullet," Ms. Zeidler remembered. "He held it in his hands and just kept staring at it."

When he was 4, she asked him if he wanted a dog.

"No," he responded. "I'd rather have a turtle."

By first grade, his favorite dinosaurs looked more like Godzilla than Barney. That year, he chose as a science project to write an essay titled "Why Does a Lizard Shed Its Skin?

He was rewarded with a lizard of his own. His parents bought him a bearded dragon he named Spotty.

"By the time he was in middle school," Ms. Zeidler said, "he had a complete fascination with reptiles."

In September, Mr. Zeidler will attend the University of Kansas, where he will study ecology in evolutionary biology. He said he wants to work "at a zoo or a science lab or anywhere else I can be around reptiles.''

While he is away, his mother will have to care for Spotty and Chomper, the turtle she gave him when he was 4, as well as three other turtles, two other lizards and four snakes.

"I'm going to miss those guys," Mr. Zeidler said, "and I know they're going to miss me."