Purchase a personally signed and inscribed copy. It would make a great Christmas gift. Total cost of $23.00, which includes shipping, handling, and tax.

Send a check made out to Bruce Means, at 1313 Milton Street, Tallahassee, FL 32303.

The author is a world expert on the eastern diamondback rattlesnake, which he calls the “Gentle Ben” of venomous snakes, as it prefers to hide and not rattle. We learn that the alligator snapper is a big, hulking turtle intent on luring fishes with its wormlike tongue. We find out that though many Southern woodsmen have reported the cottonmouth “chasing” them, this behavior is actually just a snake’s version of bluffing.

A little further from his Florida Panhandle home, in Costa Rica, Means manages to find the rare and deadly bushmaster, but his adventure is further heightened by the eruption of a volcano—where his two young sons are hiking. In Australia, he searches for a breeding pair of "roughies," the rare rough-scaled python, as well as the "fiercey," reputed to be the world’s deadliest terrestrial snake. In Mexico, he stalks the rattlesnake that might have served as the model for the mythical “plumed serpent” of Maya shown with a tail with rattles.

Through his eyes and experiences, Means hopes that readers will gain a new appreciation for animals without fur or feathers—animals called herps, or creeping-crawling things. This book is about his love for herps, i.e., herpetophilia, a subdivision of E. O. Wilson’s biophilia.