Andy Snider, Fresno Chaffee Zoo's director of animal care and conservation, travels to Armenia each year to assist on a project to tag and track Armenian vipers. Snider is a nationally known expert on reptiles and amphibians. He is trying to learn how much land is needed to sustain snake populations. Snider is in Armenia until Sept. 10 and is sharing his experiences with readers of The Bee.

Part 1, August 23-26

This, my fourth trip to Armenia, began with a few difficulties. After missing my connecting flight in London, then going through Germany to arrive in Yerevan Armenia 4 hours later than expected, my two pieces of checked luggage were missing (which, by the way is totally my luck!).

My Armenian colleagues had no way of knowing when my "new" flight would arrive, so no one was at the airport waiting for me, so I tried to use the two phone numbers I had. I realized after a fashion that one of them was an office number, which certainly wasn't going to work at 4:30 am on a Saturday morning. The other, a cell number, didn't have the correct number of digits, so that didn't work either.

I tried to call my St. Louis colleague's "emergency" phone but just got a recording. So, I went to the internet cafe at the airport and left e-mails for two Armenian colleagues and my St. Louis colleague, just in case someone would check e-mails eventually. After waiting 5 hours, I found a wonderful lady at a cell phone company at the airport that tried "adding" an extra digit to the cell phone number I had, and finally we reached the right person! Getting picked up at the airport was wonderful, after having traveled for over 27 hours and waiting an additional 5.

Later in the day, we (my St. Louis colleagues Jeff and Matt, and me) were invited to the home of our Armenian colleagues and friend, Aram Aghasyan and family, for a wonderful dinner of cucumber/tomato salad, lavash, bread, kebabs, and pork, along with beer and the ever-present vodka. Aram, along with his son Levon, are a very large part of this project - Aram works for the Armenian Ministry of Nature, and both he and his son do much of the project's work with the snakes while we're not in the country. We discussed what we hoped to accomplish during this trip, and called it an early night since I had not yet slept after the trip.

The next morning, Sunday, we went to the study site in Abovian, to radiotrack the snakes that had been implanted with radiotransmitters during the spring by Jeff and a veterinarian from St. Louis. With two teams of 3 people each, we found 9 of the snakes (Armenian vipers, Montivipera raddei, for those science-oriented folks!), including one that had traveled over 2 miles since the last time it had been found. Pretty impressive for such a small snake!

I should mention that this project has been ongoing for 5 years now, having been originally conceived during a trip to Russia that Jeff and I had taken in 2002. Now, this project is Jeff's Ph.D. thesis, and I'm one of his assistants. Abovian is a wonderful site, only about 1/2 hour outside of Yerevan, yet with quite a large number of snakes. A wonderful rocky hillside is the snakes' habitat, making the hiking rather laborious but wonderful nonetheless. You certainly get your exercise, that's for sure!

Monday - a day of rest. We ate fruits, vegetables and meat that we bought from the street vendors and small shops near our "flat," and got along just fine. A visit from the Curator of Reptiles at the Yerevan Zoo was a nice surprise, as Jeff had purchased some equipment for him to use - equipment very difficult to acquire in Armenia but very easy in America.

Tuesday - We went back to the field site, and managed to find yet another specimen that we had been unable to locate before. Luckily, two of the members of our team (not including me!) took off down the mountainside to find the missing animal, then walked a further few miles back to the original site, where we were waiting anxiously for them. But the main thing is that they were successful! On the way back to the flat, Levon announced that my luggage had been found and was at the airport, so after a short rest we headed to the airport. Interestingly enough, the baggage counter folks wanted to hear all about our research, and then proceeded to tell me that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's grandmother was Armenian! All the people here are wonderful, helpful, and a real pleasure to deal with. Friendlier people you'll never meet.

Andy