THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 25, 1995 TAG: 9506220069
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: REAL LOVE
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 190 lines
WHAT FIRST attracted Barbara Savitzky to her husband, Alan, was not so much his good looks, his vast knowledge of biology or his sense of humor.
No, she was attracted by something different. Something reptilian. Venomous even.
Snakes.
He had them. She needed them.
Of such things, love is born. ``It wasn't your standard barroom pickup line, that's for sure,'' Barbara says.
That was eight years ago, and the Savitzkys still find themselves immersed in the subject of snakes.
They talk snakes over supper. Study snakes at work and after. Vacation to places where they're most likely to find the limbless creatures.
Both Savitzkys are herpetologists. He teaches biology at Old Dominion University; she teaches the same subject at Christopher Newport University.
Lately they're best known as the couple who started a study at Northwest River Park in Chesapeake that erupted into statewide controversy.
A study of snakes. But that's getting ahead of their story.
It's only natural the Savitzkys would first meet at a snake convention. That was in 1985 at the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists in Knoxville, Tenn.
Alan was working at ODU; Barbara was a student at the University of Tennessee. But it wasn't until 1987 that Barbara arranged a more personal meeting.
Working on her doctorate in biology, she began a study on the eating habits of water snakes. She needed to compare the snakes' eating habits with those of cottonmouths. She had plenty of water snakes, but not enough cottonmouths. Someone told her to check with Dr. Alan Savitzky, who had snakes to spare.
She talked with him about it at - where else - another snake convention, and he readily agreed.
``It was at least three snakes I gave you, wasn't it?'' bushy-bearded Alan asks Barbara as they sit in an ODU lab.
``Ummm. Maybe it was five,'' she answers. ``I know you had some small ones, which I really needed. I didn't have good variety. I had a lot of large snakes
And off they go talking again about the study of snakes. It is a never-ending topic of discussion with them.
They discovered early on they both had similar childhoods: Barbara had always brought worms and plants and bugs into the house, much to her mother's dismay. Alan had pulled off his first snake capture at summer camp when he was 7, lining up a group of kids to trap a ribbon snake. He ended up in the doctor's office getting a tetanus shot for his first snake bite.
``It instilled in me a fear of shots, but not a fear of snakes,'' he says.
While the study of snakes may have seemed unusual to other people, the topic was equally natural and fascinating to Barbara and Alan.
Barbara moved to Norfolk the year after the snake exchange, and the two herpetologists married in 1988. She got a job at Christopher Newport University in 1990, and soon they came up with the idea for a project they could work on together: a study on the canebrake rattlesnake.
It's early evening one day in May, and the Savitzkys are poised over a snake in an ODU lab. Alan is calling out measurements of canebrake rattler No. CN-9. Barbara is holding the snake's head in a bottle of chloroform with one hand, and scribbling figures in a notebook with the other.
Length of body. Number of ventral scales. Grams of weight.
``She's lost weight,'' Barbara says.
``She just came out of hibernation, so that's not usual,'' Alan says as he pulls a tape measure over the snake's body. ``Wait, don't turn her yet.''
``I'm not turning her; she's turning herself,'' she says as the thick rope of snake writhes on the lab table.
The Savitzkys have just anesthetized the snake to surgically extract a radio transmitter. They'd been using the transmitter to track the snake in Northwest River Park.
The surgery is a process that is at once necessary and heartbreaking. Heartbreaking to the Savitzkys because they had hoped to study this snake for at least another 15 years. Necessary because the state pulled permission for them to study the snake at the Chesapeake-owned park because of farmers' protests.
The idea had been to track the movements and habitats of canebrake rattlesnakes, designated as endangered in Virginia since 1992, over a period of 18 years to see why the number is dwindling.
At first the Savitzkys went at it alone. The first year, they went to the park almost every day to find canebrakes, bringing them to the lab to implant the transmitters. Then they returned the snakes to the woods and tracked their movements over time.
They learned about the places the snakes hibernated. The territories where they lived. How much they grew in a year. How far they traveled in a month. What they ate.
Three years into the study they were tracking 12 snakes, and they had a contingent of graduate students working with them.
Though the Savitzkys didn't fear snakes, politics was a different matter.
Farmers got wind of the project last year when a snake slithered off park property into nearby fields.
The Savitzkys asked permission to track it. Questions were asked, and the next thing they knew, the Savitzkys were facing down an angry crowd at Chesapeake City Council.
Del. J. Randy Forbes questioned whether the safety of children at the park was at stake.
The Savitzkys pointed out the snakes lived in the park whether they studied them or not.
Farmers said the study could lead to the canebrake rattler being declared federally endangered, which could some day restrict use of their land.
The Savitzkys countered the snake is abundant in other states so that was highly unlikely.
``We couldn't win,'' Alan says. ``I think there was this idea that we controlled the snakes, since they had transmitters in them. Like they were radio-controlled snakes or something.''
The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, which had provided a grant for the study, told the Savitzkys to stop the study in the park. While the three years of tracking had given the husband-and-wife team clues to the mating and hibernation patterns of the rattler, it was not long enough to come to solid conclusions.
``That's one thing about doing a study together - when you go down, you go down together,'' Barbara says.
``At least we understood how each other felt,'' Alan says.
That was in September. Now the Savitzkys are removing the last of the transmitters.
``There,'' Alan says wryly, holding up the radio transmitter with a pair of tweezers. ``That should keep everyone safe.''
The morning following the surgery, the Savitzkys are at Northwest River Park for one of their last forays into territory they have trod hundreds of times over the past three years.
They have come here in the snow of winter, the rain of spring, the bug-infested heat of summer and everything in between.
And as if politics and fear were not enough to fight, Barbara has battled an even more formidable foe at the same time. Breast cancer.
She was diagnosed with it in 1990, and she and Alan tackled it with their usual scientific zeal. They studied the subject at a medical library, visited prosthesis shops, and queried her doctors relentlessly.
They went with the most aggressive treatment - a mastectomy - but the cancer returned twice, lowering the chances that she'd survive from 90 percent to well below 50 percent.
``As far as the cancer goes, I have it, and I'm scared,'' Barbara says. ``I don't know what else there is to say.''
The canebrake study helped sustain her, though. She tracked snakes through the Northwest River Park woods during two rounds of chemotherapy. ``The thing about chemo is you feel sick whether you're in bed or up moving around,'' she says.
So she moved around. Now her hair has fallen out for the second time, and she is wearing a blue scarf around her head as she walks through the woods at the park.
It takes more than an hour to find the spot where CN-9 was picked up the previous day. Alan releases the snake, curled up a mesh bag in his backpack, while Barbara takes notes on the temperature, the time of day, the amount of sunlight.
The snake reels away, black-and-yellow mottled skin blending with the leaves as the Savitzkys watch in awe at the majesty of the creature.
``It's frustrating,'' says Alan, watching the snake disappear. ``Because we could have learned so much more.''
For the Savitzkys it has been eight years of exhilarating study and frustrating politics, joint aggravation and enduring faith, love and fear.
Both the study and the disease have been causes for them to rally around.
They're waiting to see whether Barbara's second round of chemotherapy is successful at beating back the cancer.
But the canebrake study is on indefinite hold for now. Presenting the Savitzkys with a Catch-22, the state told them they could continue the study at a different site. But they'd have to reapply for funding as a new study, and no grant money was available for new studies.
Alan turns red in the face at this. Barbara shrugs and shakes her head.
``I'm the short-tempered one of the two of us, a panic-attack sort of person,'' Alan says.
``I'm slower to get engaged and slower to get over it,'' Barbara says. ``So we're rising and peaking at different times. Being the optimist, I think we'll still find the money for the study and start up somewhere else. I really do believe that.''
Whatever happens, the Savitzkys are likely to face it together with equal doses of scientific integrity and good humor. ILLUSTRATION: TAMARA VONINSKI/Staff color photos
RIGHT: The Savitzkys met at a snake convention and married in 1988.
He teaches at Old Dominion, she at Christopher Newport.
FAR RIGHT: The couple puts a canbrake[sic] rattlesnake to sleep.
Barbara and Alan Savitzky remove a radio transmitter they had
implanted in a rattlesnake. Their scientific study ended abruptly
when the state told them to stop.
TAMARA VONINSKI/Photo
Alan Savitzky reluctantly removes a transmitter from a rattlesnake.
``We couldn't win,'' he says. ``I think there was this idea that we
controlled the snakes, since they had transmitters in them.''
by CNB