Bob Mason is a snake scientist, and he really likes snakes. His office is decorated with snakes, and every year in the spring he gets together lots of students and volunteers to study snakes as they wake up from hibernation. In spring, the Narcisse caves near Winnipeg, Canada come alive with thousands of red-sided garter snakes. The snakes hibernate in huge numbers in underground cave, and when the ground thaws, they all come up at once. Quite a sight to see! Bob Mason has many questions about these snakes: What do they eat? How do they communicate? How far do they travel? And how do they find their way back here, year after year? This book follows Bob and a group of ordinary people who volunteer to work with the snakes, as they count, track, and try to answer some questions about these snakes. This book is part of Smithsonian's Scientists in the Field series, which show you what their work is like, what they do on an average day, and how they figure things out. There are also lots of good Web links in the book if you want to find projects like this in your own town, and meet some more scientists doing all sorts of interesting things.