Monster Doctor

Herpetologist William H. Woodin III of Tucson, Ariz, is devoted to one of the oddest of odd scientific occupations. Last week he was scurrying round the desert taking the temperatures of Gila monsters.

Young Woodin (grandson of William H. Woodin, Franklin D. Roosevelt's first Secretary of the Treasury) is assistant director of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Trailside Museum. His purpose: to explore the intimate lives of all Southwestern reptiles, a subject not well known. Since reptiles are "coldblooded" (i.e., have no built-in thermostats as mammals do), they must adjust their activities to the temperature around them. In cold weather they are sluggish, and if they stay out too long in Arizona's searing sun, they die of heat prostration. So Woodin believes that an important step toward understanding the life routines of desert reptiles is to observe their behavior and take their internal temperature under all weather conditions.

This involves a tricky operation. At this time of the year, the Gila monsters (thick-bodied venomous lizards with skins like orange and black beadwork) avoid the summer heat, come out only at night. So Woodin hunts them at night by jeep. After the sun has set, the monsters like to lie on the pavement, enjoying its lingering warmth. Woodin steps up to the beaded, venomous patient, pins its neck down with a forked stick, and, with practiced skill, slips a specially made, quick-registering clinical thermometer into the beast's rectum.

Scientist Woodin does not limit himself to Gila monsters. He has taken the temperatures of 5-ft. rattlesnakes, fringe-footed lizards and venomous coral snakes. After he is through with a patient, he gives it an identifying mark in case of a future encounter.

There is plenty left to do; Arizona has some 50 kinds of lizards and 70 kinds of snakes. But the Gila monster remains his favorite, partly because so little is known about it. Hardly anyone, for instance, has ever seen a Gila monster egg or a baby Gila monster. Woodin hopes that his studies of the monster's habits will lead him to the secret nests where the monsters are hatched.

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