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My name is Mladen. This page is mostly my doing (because I have enough time for it). My main interest "up there" (beside Lord, the dog!) are Snakes. 

That interest started to develop when we started to go more often to our property (year 2000) and so I was a witness to several Aesculapian Snakes and one Nose-horned Viper being killed and when Lord (so I was told) encountered, even dug up a few snakes and lizards. I was worried about him because I knew that there were Nose-horned Vipers there and I didn't know anything about the other snakes.  

Then, in 2004, I got cable TV in June. I watched snake documentaries ("Crocodile Hunter", "The Snake Buster"...) and about other wildlife all the time, and on the internet I found information about "native" snake species. In August I went on my first active snake search, worried by the tails of our neighbours that said "...before there were a lot more of them..." 

From that day I am involved in finding, photographing and rescuing reptiles in the Vugrovec area and I also educate our neighbours about themand sometimes I bring what I "caught" to show them. All the animals that i find I return to where I found them, except if they are too close to humans that are afraid of them and/or kill them. Then I relocate them a little further away to a safer spot.

In 2007. I joined the Croatian Herpetologycal Society HYLA and I cooperate with people from the State Institute for Nature Protection, Nature Park Medvednica and Nature Park Maksimir.

With all of that, I also play the guitar and am a member of these forums: HerpFamily.com,  Bird Forum.

My Mom Vesna, she's crazy about birds as much as I am about snakes. She's responsible for the majority of the photos of everything and for the visual design of these web pages. She constantly stalks photo opportunities, especially birds and butterflies, and ever since we made the "feeding stations", there are plenty of opportunities. She is also a member of : Ptice.net, Bird Forum.

My Dad Mario does a little bit of everything: together we made the bird "feeding stations" and nest boxes (in which the birds moved in soon after we put them on the trees). He maintains meadows and thickets, finds rare birds and plants, even mice, maintains the "roads" and our vacation cottage. He grows vegetables and grains and buys the bird seeds.

    

My cousin Jelena studies Biology on PMF, so this comes as good field practice. She identified a lot of our plants, butterflies and even the contents of a couple of owl pellets.

  

Lord is the dog who has become friends with a lot of weekenders and residents of villages Vugrovec and Vukasi. He's the main reason why we started coming almost every day from the year 2000. off to Vugrovec (he was born that year) and intensively observe, protect and take notes of the nature around us.