Saturday, August 25, 2007

Snake-lets

The excitement at the office this week was the hatching of some snakes. My coworker found some black racer snake eggs a couple weeks ago and passed them out to various people to hatch. Everyone's eggs hatched and someone brought theirs in for everyone to see. Now this species of snake is notorious for its nasty attitude and willingness to attack. Even the young will agressively strike even though they are the size of a jumbo pencil. One of these snakes did attack a coworker soon after it hatched, but both snakes have mellowed. I held both of them and they were very friendly....not biting. When these guys mature, they'll turn a solid black color and will be very long and fast....hence their name black racer. I'm not sure what will happen with these two. The keeper is afraid to handle them and she even freaked a bit just by touching them. But I think she and her son have already become quite attached. Gotta love their big puppy dog eyes.


This is what they will look like when grown.







3 comments:

lioux said...

Snakes fascinate me too.

Colleen said...

Yikes! Is that hand in the first picture a kid's hand? It looks too young to be a coworker of yours.

Kartek said...

Yes. It's a couple young children of my coworker semi holding the snake. Don't worry. The snake is so small that a bite from it wouldn't really be felt.

P.S. The son of the egg hatcher has not been handling the release of the snakelets in the wild. He woke up last night crying that he missed his snakes. Poor guy.