Dr. Bauldauf
Dr. Bauldauf was one of our profs who wore the Dr.; title whom we thought
deserved it. He was very smart, yet down to earth. He was our Wildlife Science
prof and we met at night with him. He used a lot of slide show presentations and
one of the things I remember was what he did when he thought we were dozing
off. All of a sudden he would flash a picture of a Bathing Beauty up on the
screen and say, "Opps, that is for the lecture at the American Legion, sorry!!"
and of course this momentarily woke us. Most of the things he lectured on I had
already taken in my Ornithology/Herpetology/Mamalogy class at Lamar Tech.
This course was right up my alley and was one of the easier classes I had at
Texas A&M. One day he took us on a field trip somewhere south of the Aggie
campus. In my class at Lamar we took a field trip every Friday so I was familiar
with what to expect. Upon arriving at the property right away I spotted a willow
tree near a pond. In the past I had found snakes in a similar tree, so I began
peeling off bark. Suddenly a whole cluster of snakes ran out and so did my
Yankee classmates, many who had never seen a snake outside of a zoo. I can
still hear them shouting, "Jesus Christ!!" as they scattered like scared rabbits.
Meanwhile, as I was laughing I was hand picking several of the snakes as they
were harmless Ribbon Snakes. I think there must have been at least a dozen
that came out of that willow bark.
Another thing about Dr. Bauldauf that is worth telling, he later became director
of the Houston Museum of Natural Science.