TUCSON – Cecil Schwalbe lifted the aquarium lid and picked up the 21-inch-long, black-and-orange Gila monster, carefully holding the reptile’s mouth closed to avoid being bitten.

Schwalbe, one of the leading ecologists in reptile and amphibian research for the U.S. Geological Survey and an assistant professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona, has been bitten once before – in front of about 200 people while giving a lecture – and he has no intention of it happening again.

This Gila monster barely moved while Schwalbe held it firmly by the mouth and upper body.

“People who work with me almost laugh whenever I end up having to relate that story,” said Schwalbe, 67, who works with graduate students at the UA on reptile and amphibian research. “I’ve probably told that story 100 times. It got so much attention because few professional herpetologists have gotten bitten.”

Schwalbe was bitten while trying to show the audience the Gila monster’s teeth.

“I no longer reflect the lower lip to show the teeth because I don’t want to spend time in the hospital again,” he said. “It was a painful, venomous bite.”

Even though the bite draws attention to his work, Schwalbe said “it’s trivial compared to the work I do on conservation of leopard frogs, desert tortoises, lizards and snakes.”

While most workroom garages contain power tools, Schwalbe’s contains four Gila monsters and more than 10 snakes, including seven different species of rattlesnakes, which he uses for research and teaching. He said he only handles the rattlesnakes with snake tongs when doing research, teaching or cleaning cages.

The animals in his garage require a special permit and were taken from construction sites or people selling them illegally, Schwalbe said.

In addition to the animals in his garage, Schwalbe also has two desert tortoises and two box turtles in his front yard, as well as two baby desert tortoises in aquariums by his front door with cardboard lids taped on to keep away his three Siamese cats.

And the 2,000-gallon pond in the backyard of his East Side home near Saguaro National Park contains native lowland leopard frogs as well as native fish.

Schwalbe said his fascination with reptiles and amphibians began at a young age and grew over time.

“I didn’t have a fear, I had a great respect and a great fascination with them,” he said. “In Texas, where I grew up, I’d catch snakes, lizards and turtles and keep them and not really know how to keep them well. A lot of my fascination and desire to go into that (herpetology) was from keeping these animals alive. 

“My mom didn’t mind the lizards and stuff, but she didn’t like the snakes. We had an instance where I kept a blue racer (snake) in my closet and it escaped from its cage. Mom found it when she was taking dirty laundry out of my closet and the ‘fit hit the shan,’ as they say. It wasn’t dangerous, but had I had a rattlesnake in the house or copperhead I would have been thoroughly grounded for that.”

It’s clear that Schwalbe is passionate about his work when he points to the light blue T-shirt he’s wearing with a caricature of a gun-wielding Gila monster with seven human and six cow notches on its belt. The shirt’s caption is “Mammals? We don’t need no stinking mammals!”

The shirt was designed by longtime friend Randy Babb, a biologist in the Arizona Game and Fish Department and wildlife photographer.

“It’s kind of a wonder we ever became friends,” Babb said over the phone from his home in Apache Junction. “A friend of mine was the curator of the reserved animal collection at Arizona State University, and he had contacted the reserve collection manager at UA to ask if he could look at their collection.

“I went along with him and when we showed up at the door of the museum, we knocked on the door and Cecil stuck his head out and said, ‘Who are you? Well, I have permission to let Kevin in but I don’t have permission to let you in.’”

Schwalbe didn’t let Babb in.

“He received instructions to let one person in and that’s all he was going to do,” Babb said.    “Cecil wasn’t rude. He just said, ‘I’m sorry, you’re just going to have to find something to do for a few hours. I only have permission to let one person in.’"

Babb said the two “met again and became really good friends” a few years later when Schwalbe became the first Arizona state herpetologist for Arizona Game and Fish in 1984.

“He’s been an incredible mentor in my life and mentored countless other biologists,” Babb said. “When you put together their work with his, you have this massive influence on the whole field.”

Babb said Schwalbe is not a typical biologist.

“When you think of biology or biologists, most people view it as not exciting and think the people involved in it are stuffy folks absorbed in the subject,” Babb said. “Certainly there are those folks, but Cecil defied all those stereotypes. He has charm and wit. He loves puns and the worse they are, the more he enjoys them. He has an excellent sense of humor, something people don’t expect from a biologist or scientist.”

Bret Sigafus, a U.S. Geological Survey employee who works for Schwalbe, agreed. “Cecil is amazing with the public,” he said. “People take to him. His laugh grabs everybody’s attention. In a large meeting you know he’s there.”

Engineering didn’t grab him

Schwalbe said his original career path wasn’t in biology.

“My dad was in the insurance business, and I didn’t realize that biology was a reasonable profession,” he said.

Schwalbe received an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering in 1969 from Rice University in Texas after a stint in Vietnam.

“When I came back, I knew I didn’t really want to be an engineer even though I ended up getting my degree in it,” he added. “I was trying to think of what I wanted to do. Biology seemed to be the thing that I enjoyed the most growing up.

“In the third grade I wrote to all 48 states and asked for information on their wildlife from game and fish agencies because I was really into natural history, and my dad and I hunted and fished a lot. About 30 of the states sent me all these fact sheets on animals and stuff and I remember I actually used it through high school for papers I had to write.”

Schwalbe applied to several graduate schools and received a master’s degree in environmental science with a minor in ecology from Washington State University in 1973.

His next stop was the UA.

“I got accepted into the doctoral program here at UA and struggled for several years trying to figure out what organism to study,” he said. “I was starting to work on birds and some other critters, and then I stumbled onto a lizard project. I really got into reptiles and amphibians and got totally enraptured in the whole herpetological world.”

However, he said his family didn’t fully support his new career.

“My great grandmother was killed by a Western diamondback (rattlesnake), so when I became a herpetologist, I was the real black sheep in the family,” he said.

Schwalbe described his wife of seven years, Carol, as being “snake-phobic” at first, but said she has gotten used to them over time.

“We met at the Institute of Desert Ecology,” said Carol Schwalbe, an associate professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, who was writing a story for the National Geographic Traveler Magazine when she met Cecil through a mutual friend years ago.

“He was one of the instructors, and people in the group were passing around a snake, not a venomous snake. Somebody gave it to me and I wasn’t about to touch it. It started to slither up my sleeve and he came to my rescue. That was my first introduction to his snakes. I’ve gotten better. I actually have held one, just a baby garter snake, so I’ve gotten somewhat over my phobia, but not completely.”

State’s first herpetologist

Schwalbe finished his PhD at UA in 1981 and became the assistant curator of the UA herpetology collection of amphibians and reptiles.

“Then I applied for and became the first state herpetologist for Arizona Game and Fish,” he said. “I’ve just been lucky to get some jobs that were almost tailored for me. Being the first state herpetologist for the Arizona Game and Fish Department was just a neat position because when there would be new discoveries, it was great being in on that.”

Schwalbe worked there for six years before coming to the UA to establish an applied research program on herpetology with an emphasis on the desert tortoise.

Throughout his career, Schwalbe has conducted research on the physiology, herpetology, ecology and conservation biology of amphibians and reptiles. He’s currently working on a project to try to save the Arizona native lowland leopard frog from extinction.

“Because of the drought in the Southwest that began in the early1990s, some of the natural population of the lowland leopard frog dried up and disappeared in the early 2000s,” he said. “Herpetologists got this project going where if the neighbors of Saguaro National Park will build a pond to certain specifications, the park will provide tadpoles or eggs of the leopard frog.”

Of course the area neighborhood near the national park includes Schwalbe’s backyard pond.

He’s also conducting research in his pond – on non-native bullfrogs, leopard frogs and chytrid disease – that’s largely funded by the Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative, the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Chytrid disease can kill native leopard frogs and is often carried to ponds through non-native bullfrogs, and Schwalbe’s pond is one of the only ones in the area not infected with chytrid.

“Bullfrogs are one of the species of frogs able to live with the disease,” said Kris Ratzlaff, a UA graduate student in the School of Natural Resources working on a frog study with Schwalbe as one of her advisers. “Bullfrogs also will eat the leopard frogs, so if you find a bullfrog in your pond, chances are if you leave it there it will eat all your frogs. If you have one around, usually that will be the only thing living in that area.”

Ratzlaff said Schwalbe has been “instrumental” in helping her succeed as a graduate student and conduct research.

“My thesis is on frogs,” she said. “I’ve learned a lot about frog ecology because he knows a lot about the care of frogs then he also showed me how to capture them and how to take care of them.”

Schwalbe said that once he retires – and he’s not sure when that will be – he hopes to get more involved in his hobby of wildlife photography.

“I started when I was a graduate student,” said Schwalbe, whose photos have been featured in textbooks and magazines, including National Geographic and Audubon. “I had a photographer look at my images and they were all so bad. He made me wake up and realize there are certain rules you need to follow to stay in focus. Too bad he had no suggestions for maintaining focus in all the other areas of my life.

“I also want to take some basic drawing courses, not to produce art, but to be able to draw cartoons and get the Gary Larson out of me. Among my friends I am considered to have a twisted sense of humor. I would like to find some other ways of expressing it. With cartoons, I can even offend people at a distance. That appeals to me.”