Critter Chat Celebrates the Year of the Snake with the California Mountain Kingsnake

Starting the 2025 season having recently won KVMR’s prestigious Award for Excellence in Public Affairs and Community Service Programming, Critter Chat hosts and producers Marney Blair and Susan Brandt celebrate the Year of the Snake with the king of snakes, the California Mountain Kingsnake. Found in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, these snakes are as beautiful as they are important to the ecology of a thriving wildlife environment. 

Guests on the show include:

Emily Taylor, professor of Biological Sciences, California Polytechnic State University; director of Physiological Ecology of Reptiles Laboratory; and author of California Snakes and How to Find Them;  

Kevin Wiseman, biologist and scientific illustrator with the Department of Herpetology at the California Academy of Sciences, where he leads the workshop Reptiles and Amphibians of the Sierra Nevada.

Jeannie Wood, executive director of the Community Asian Theatre of the Sierra (CATS) and host of the Chinese Lunar New Year Celebration “Year of the Snake" in Nevada City on February 23, 2025

As storytellers of Sierra Nevada wildlife, Blair and Brandt offer school teachers and community groups Critter Chat for their students and constituents with podcasts freely available.  Also available are teaching notes with vocabulary words and concepts for each show, such as “talus” and “skull morphology” to learn about snakes.

See critterchat.org for more links to California Mountain Kingsnake resources.

Critter Chat is written and produced by Marney Blair and Susan Brandt and edited with Claudio Mendonca at KVMR. Each episode features one species of the many species that live in the Sierra Nevada foothills and mountains. 

Attached image credit: 

California Mountain Kingsnake photo © Gary Nafis