This Tuesday night at the zoo we had one of my favorite programs = the Reptile Rap. I do love our reptiles, and it’s nice to be able to show them off to the crowds.
For this program we had people from the Imaginarium come, and they brought a few of their reptiles with them: they had a 35 pound snapping turtle, a monitor lizard, a Chinese water dragon, and a tiny little American alligator. They spent about 10-15 minutes on each animal, telling people about them and answering questions.
After the Imaginarium introduced us to all of their guys, a friend of Katie’s stood up and showed off his bearded dragon. He’s been at past reptile programs also, so I’ve gotten to see the dragon grow up from just a tiny little thing to his present size at about a foot long. The kid (I’m so sorry – I don’t know his name) was nervous standing up in front of people, but did a great job – particularly for a teenager!
Then Katie stood up (not an easy thing for her these days, as she is about 7 months pregnant with a rather large baby boy) and talked about our animals. Three volunteers – myself included – got to be the handlers.
Brian held our ball python, who is a very nice snake. He wasn’t entirely comfortable handling snakes, but he did a good job.
I got to hold the Western hog nosed snake, who is just the sweetest little thing! She is absolutely beautiful, and quite feisty too. She hisses at everything (which is why I held her and not Brian) and sounds exactly like a rattlesnake. People in the crowd were jumping every time she hissed: she’s very loud.
Britt, the zoo photographers assistant, handled our Eastern box turtle: not an easy job as he is a wiggle-worm and is very strong.
The last few minutes of the program allowed people to come up and get a closer look at all the animals. They got to ask questions and even pet most of them – not the snapping turtle or the hog nosed snake, however.
All in all, it really was a great program.
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