Learned cats and other pets?

[Patricia D]

We like dogs too. Oh yes. And hamsters. And...

They're an education too. All of them.

I ain't keeping no snakes though. No disrespect to snakes but my daughter works as a vet nurse.

They 'star gaze' when they are ill. Lie belly up. Loki the zoo python was found star gazing one morning, poor soul, and didn't make it. But if they are well and happy and big enough, they are liable to start measuring you.

There is something compelling about an ill snake just lying there, gazing at the sky. I'm the oddball who is not afraid of snakes.
When the children were young, we had a variety of pets, but they never kept the snakes, or any other wild creatures, for long. I'd convince whoever had captured it that the animal was really unhappy away from its family and should be returned to whence it came. One exception: a small copperhead that, thank heaven, did not bite the little boys who scooped it up in a bucket. I might have let it go, but it was decapitated by another adult before I reached the scene.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I'd be afraid of meeting a venomous snake close up with no glass between us, for sure. I might have decapitated it too, not wanting to take those chances, finding it in the hands of those little boys. My grandmother was a herpetologist. Took a grass snake on a bus, what a jolly wheeze, but it escaped and was later killed because someone thought it might be an adder. What a shame. I blame her.

A shame. They're only doing what they do, the snakes, but there it is. I see copperheads are pit vipers, and their bite is venomous, though not usually fatal to man.

A copperhead snake had a litter of four offspring in 2009. The problem was, the snake hadn't had any contact with a male in five years. Scientists confirmed recently the female copperhead was the first evidence of virgin birth in a pit viper snake.

 

[Patricia D]

A copperhead snake had a litter of four offspring in 2009. The problem was, the snake hadn't had any contact with a male in five years. Scientists confirmed recently the female copperhead was the first evidence of virgin birth in a pit viper snake. [/QUOTE]

I'm assuming she was in a zoo or something, but how did they know she'd never been with a male snake? Either way, there is a very strange story here.

Actually copperheads are shy and non-aggressive, but you don't want to step on one by accident.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

No Copperhead snake virgin birth...I don't remember where I saw it first, but it's mentioned in THIS ARTICLE with the idea that virgin births may not be uncommon in the wild.