by Adam Frost
Mr Nightingale went to the large-mammals section and Mrs Nightingale went to the zoo hospital. This left Tom and Sophie free to explore.
Tom was still slightly grumpy when they first arrived, but a morning at the zoo soon cheered him up.
First up was ‘Into Africa’. Tom and Sophie looked at giraffes and zebras and tapirs and hunting dogs. Then they headed down past Barclay Court and saw penguins and pelicans and flamingos.
Then they had two doughnuts each on the picnic lawn.
Next it was time to look at the lion cubs that had been born two months before. Sophie took a photo of them every week and put it on her blog.
After that, they went to see some ‘Megabugs’ in the B.U.G.S. centre. Tom did what he always did: found the red-kneed bird-eating spider and put his nose up against the glass for about ten minutes.
Then it was lunchtime. As they walked into the Oasis cafe, they saw their parents sitting at their usual table. A tall woman with long red hair was sitting with them.
‘Hello, you two,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘Having fun?’
Tom and Sophie nodded.
‘Have you been to the reptile house yet?’ Mr Nightingale asked.
‘No, we’re saving that for this afternoon,’ said Tom.
‘Quite right!’ exclaimed the woman. ‘Save the best till last! Well, when you get there, ask a member of staff to come and find me.’
‘This is Daisy,’ said Mr Nightingale. ‘She’s one of my friends. She runs the reptile house.’
‘I want to give you a guided tour. And show you behind the scenes too,’ Daisy said.
‘Wow!’ said Sophie, amazed.
‘How come?’ asked Tom, astounded.
‘To say thank you,’ said Daisy. ‘Thank you for rescuing those snakes. You’ve both been very brave and very kind.’
Tom and Sophie looked embarrassed.
‘Luckily, nearly all of the snakes were on our collection plan. So that means we can keep them,’ said Daisy.
‘What’s a collection plan?’ asked Sophie.
‘It’s our wish list. Every zoo has a list of animals that it wants to add to its collection,’ said Daisy. ‘Otherwise we’d end up with three hundred and sixteen zebras and a cormorant. With a collection plan, you have an idea of the species you want to keep and why, and how many of each species.’
‘So it’s a bit like writing a letter to Father Christmas?’ said Sophie. ‘You just make a long list of everything you want?’
‘Precisely!’ said Daisy. ‘And on our Christmas list there was an inland taipan, an anaconda, a king cobra, a Burmese python, an Antiguan racer, two long-nosed vipers, a black mamba and a banded krait. And thanks to you, we’ve got the lot!’
‘So what do you think, kids?’ asked Mr Nightingale. ‘Feel like seeing some slimy snakes?’
‘They’re not slimy, Dad,’ Sophie shot back. ‘A snake’s skin tends to be dry and smooth.’
Daisy burst out laughing. ‘They’re good, these two! I can see that we’re going to become the best of friends!’
Chapter 7
‘Now, as I was saying, we don’t usually let members of the public back here,’ said Daisy as she led Tom and Sophie through a small door in the side of the reptile house, ‘so don’t tell anyone or I’ll feed you to Horace.’
‘Is Horace one of your snakes?’ asked Tom.
‘No, this is Horace,’ said Daisy. She introduced a short stocky man in his early sixties with very hairy arms.
‘Don’t listen to her,’ Horace said with a grin. ‘I’m a vegetarian.’
‘Right, let’s show you some snakes,’ said Daisy.
They left Horace behind and went through another door. They walked in front of a python’s enclosure and then through another small door marked ‘PRIVATE’.
They were in a large room, full of busy zookeepers.
‘This room is right in the middle of the reptile house,’ said Daisy.
Tom and Sophie looked up and around.
‘These small hatches in the wall lead directly to the snakes’ enclosures,’ she went on, pointing at a series of square grey doors. ‘We open those when we’re cleaning or feeding any of the animals.’
Then Daisy pointed at some boxes and glass cases against one of the walls.
‘If we need to take snakes off display,’ said Daisy, ‘we put them in one of those. The glass cases are for when they’re unwell. The boxes are for when they hibernate.’
Next she pointed to a wall covered in tools.
‘This is what we use when we’re handling snakes,’ said Daisy. ‘Tongs, hooks and tubes.’
‘Do you ever just pick snakes up with your hands?’ Tom asked.
Daisy shook her head. ‘It’s been twenty-five years since anyone was bitten in this zoo and we intend to keep it that way.’
Sophie was looking at the tubes. They were a range of different widths and lengths. ‘So what exactly do you use these for?’ she asked.
‘Well, it’s funny you should ask that,’ Daisy said, ‘because one of your mum’s friends is coming over in a minute to give one of the adders a blood test. So we can show you.’ She looked over her shoulder and called out, ‘Horace, can you give us a hand?’
Horace reappeared next to Sophie.
‘Now you’ll have to stay down here,’ said Daisy. ‘Me and Horace are going to encourage Rufus, our European adder, into this tube.’
‘Why does Horace need to help you?’ Tom asked.
‘Because whenever we handle a venomous snake, we always go in twos,’ said Daisy. ‘If anything happens to one of us, the other one can raise the alarm.’
She lowered her voice. ‘Actually, Rufus isn’t really that venomous, but we don’t tell him that. Don’t want to hurt his feelings.’
‘So how do you make Rufus go into the tube?’ Sophie asked.
‘We don’t need to make him!’ Daisy said.
‘Snakes love little gaps and tunnels,’ Horace explained. ‘If you put a tube next to them, they’ll crawl inside out of curiosity.’
‘Once its head is in the tube, we hold its belly so it can’t get out,’ said Daisy.
The two zookeepers walked up a ramp towards one of the small grey hatches.
Less than a minute later, they were walking back with the snake. ‘Stay well back, kids,’ said Daisy.
At the same time, one of the vets appeared in the room. He had curly black hair and glasses. Tom and Sophie recognised him as Gavin, one of their mum’s colleagues.
They followed Daisy, Horace and Gavin into a small room with a clean white table. Rufus was placed in the centre of the table.
‘OK, kids,’ Daisy said, ‘Gavin here needs to take some blood from Rufus. Guess how he’s going to do that.’
‘Erm,’ said Tom.
‘Well, with people,’ Sophie said, ‘you usually get blood taken from your arm, but I guess Rufus doesn’t have one of those.’
‘Exactly,’ said Daisy, ‘but what he does have is a big thick vein running all the way down the middle of his body. And the best place to get to it is here.’
She pointed at his tail.
Gavin smiled and stuck a needle in Rufus’s tail.
‘Just a little prick, mate,’ Gavin said. The adder started to squirm, his head moving from side to side in the tube.
Gavin stroked Rufus gently and the snake calmed down. Then Gavin explained to Sophie and Tom that being in the tube wasn’t hurting or distressing Rufus at all.
‘So why does he need the blood test?’ Sophie asked.
‘Well, he’s been off his food for a couple of months,’ Horace said.
‘A couple of months!’ exclaimed Sophie.
‘Yeah, well, he only eats every couple of weeks,’ said Horace, ‘so it’s like you being off your food for a few days.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Sophie.
In the meantime, Gavin was looking at Daisy with a resigned expression.
‘I’m not getting any blood,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to go straight for the
heart.’
‘His heart?’ said Sophie, with a concerned look.
‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ Daisy said. ‘We do it all the time. It’s just a really easy place to get a sample. Only problem is finding it.’
‘How come it’s hard to find?’ Tom said, putting his hand up to his own heart.
‘Well, it’s easy to find yours,’ said Daisy. ‘It’s just under your chest, next to your left arm. But what if you didn’t have a chest or a left arm?’
‘So how do you find it?’ Sophie asked, with another concerned look at Gavin, who was feeling the snake’s body.
‘It’s about a third of the way along,’ Gavin said, looking up at Sophie through his big glasses, ‘but it’s different for every snake. We have a card telling us about each one. For Rufus, it’s about twenty-five centimetres from his head. That’s when it’s not moving.’
‘His heart moves?’ said Tom, feeling his own again and looking at the snake on the table.
‘Yes, every day it’s somewhere slightly different,’ said Gavin, pressing a point on Rufus’s belly. ‘Your heart’s kept in the same place by all kinds of muscles and tendons. But Rufus’s isn’t. It can slide up and down. It means that as I put the needle in that can make the heart slip out of the way.’
‘Out of the way?’ Sophie repeated.
‘Doesn’t normally happen though,’ Gavin conceded. ‘There we are.’
‘Got what you need, Gav?’ Daisy asked.
‘Yes,’ said Gavin, injecting a syringe’s worth of snake’s blood into a small bottle. ‘I’ll run some tests and let you know the results tomorrow.’
He washed his hands, clipped up his vet’s case and left the room.
‘Right, let’s get Rufus back home,’ said Daisy.
After she had returned Rufus to his vivarium, Tom said to Daisy, ‘Doesn’t Rufus get lonely? You know, being on his own all day?’
‘Not really,’ said Daisy. ‘Most snakes live by themselves, you see. They’re not sociable like us. Besides, we have got two other adders if we ever did feel like he needed a friend.’
‘Two others?’ Tom echoed. ‘I’ve never seen them.’
‘You wouldn’t have,’ Daisy said. ‘They’re kept upstairs. The zoo generally only displays a fraction of the animals in its collection. We’ve got dozens of snakes that the public has never seen.’
‘Where are they?’ Sophie asked.
‘I’m about to show you,’ Daisy said with a grin. She flicked her hair over her shoulder and led the way out of the large room and back through the reptile house.
Chapter 8
Upstairs, Tom and Sophie found themselves in a large white room full of vivariums of all shapes and sizes. They were arranged in five long rows.
They saw coral snakes and corn snakes, rat snakes and rhinocerous snakes, copperheads and keelbacks.
‘So why aren’t these snakes on show?’ Sophie asked.
‘All sorts of reasons,’ said Daisy. ‘Maybe we’ve already got one on display. Maybe we haven’t got the right vivarium for them. Maybe they’re hibernating. Maybe they’re pregnant. But, you know, we still love them.’
Tom was staring at a gigantic constrictor in a long clear enclosure.
‘That’s Bessie,’ said Daisy. ‘She’s twelve metres long. That’s probably eight times longer than you! And I think she’s hungry.’
Tom took a small step back.
‘Don’t worry, I didn’t mean she’d eat you,’ said Daisy. ‘I mean it’s time to feed her. Want to help?’
Tom and Sophie both grinned and said, ‘Yes.’
They spent the next hour helping Daisy with a variety of tasks.
First Tom fed Bessie, dropping a whole defrosted turkey, feathers and all, into her enclosure. They watched the snake stretch her mouth around the bird and swallow it whole.
‘She’s dislocating her jaw, isn’t she?’ Sophie said.
‘Not quite,’ Daisy said. ‘Her jaw’s on a hinge so she can swing it all the way back. Then she has a tendon in the middle of her chin that can stretch sideways till it’s wider than her body.’
‘Why doesn’t she just chew it?’ Tom asked.
‘Her teeth are too small to chew anything,’ Daisy said.
‘But doesn’t she have massive fangs?’ Tom asked.
‘No, she’s a constrictor,’ Daisy said. ‘Only snakes with venom have true fangs. Even if she did have them, most fangs are hollow – so they can squirt venom through the middle. You know, like that needle Gavin was holding? They’re no good for mashing up food. Having said that, she still has quite a set of teeth on her and you wouldn’t want her to bite you!’
They watched for five minutes: three-quarters of the turkey was still sticking out of Bessie’s mouth.
‘You can stay till the end if you like,’ Daisy said, ‘but it may take her a couple of hours to swallow it. You know, Bessie could eat something much bigger than that – even something as big as a Labrador!’
Tom and Sophie stared at the turkey in Bessie’s mouth for a few seconds more. Then they followed Daisy to the next vivarium where a corn snake was coiled up in a corner.
‘This is Shaun,’ said Daisy. ‘He’s having problems shedding his skin.’
Daisy looked in and saw a strip hanging from the side of his body.
‘That’s why I put that big pool of water in his vivarium,’ said Daisy, ‘but I think we might need to give him a bit more help.’
She reached under the vivarium and pulled out a branch. She offered the branch to Sophie and opened the top of the vivarium.
‘Put the branch in his pool of water. He’ll be able to rub himself against that and nudge his skin off.’
Sophie hesitated.
‘It’s OK,’ said Daisy. ‘He’s a constrictor too. Won’t bite. And he’ll only constrict you if you look like and smell a rat.’
‘Watch out then, Soph,’ Tom said.
Sophie ignored him and put the branch in the vivarium.
‘How often does he shed?’ Sophie asked, watching Shaun slide towards the branch.
‘Every couple of months,’ said Daisy.
‘Why do they do it?’ asked Tom.
‘Because snakes keep outgrowing their skin,’ Daisy said. ‘They’re not like us. They don’t get to eighteen and stop. They grow their whole lives. And their skin doesn’t stretch. If they didn’t shed their skin, they’d burst out of it.’
‘That would be way better,’ said Tom.
Next Tom and Sophie helped to clean out a vivarium. Daisy removed the snake with hooks and placed it in another enclosure. Tom and Sophie learned that each vivarium had a heat mat at one end of it, so that the snakes had a hot part (to warm up) and a cold part (to cool down).
‘Snakes can be pretty slow in the morning unless they get to a certain temperature,’ Daisy explained.
Tom and Sophie changed the substrate on the vivarium floor – pouring in fresh woodchips from a large bag. They also learned how to fit the vivarium lid on securely.
They were looking at a mangrove snake called Clive when Daisy’s radio started to crackle.
‘Hello, this is Reptiles,’ said Daisy. ‘Yep, yep, on my way.’
She turned to Tom and Sophie.
‘Bet you want to see those snakes you rescued yesterday,’ said Daisy.
‘Yes!’ exclaimed Tom and Sophie.
‘Well, that was your mum,’ said Daisy. ‘They’re about to operate on a green mamba. Want to come along?’
Two minutes later they were walking through the zoo on their way to the hospital.
At the door to the hospital they met Gavin again. His big glasses were squares of light in the sunshine.
‘We’ve got some students in from the Royal Veterinary College so you can stand with them in the observation room,’ he said, as he opened the door and ushered them inside.
‘Will I get a lamp on my head?’ Tom whispered to Sophie excitedly.
‘We’ll just be watching, not operating,’ Sophi
e replied.
‘Do you think the mamba will need LOTS of stitches at the end?’ Tom asked her.
‘Very possibly,’ said Sophie.
As they walked into the hospital building, both Tom and Sophie looked around. They’d visited their mother’s workplace a few times before, but it still felt like a strange and amazing place.
They passed one treatment room where a vet was peering up a coati’s long droopy nose. In the next room, another vet was gently lifting a pelican’s wing.
Tom hovered in the doorway of the third room. A vet was unlocking a cabinet, and then unlocking another door inside the cabinet. She pulled out a tranquilliser gun.
‘What’s she going to shoot?’ Tom asked Gavin, as Sophie pulled him away.
‘Nothing,’ said Gavin. ‘She just needs to practise. Shooting a dart into an animal is very tricky. You can be quite some distance away. And you have to hit muscle, not bone, or it can really hurt the animal. So all of us practise on a regular basis.’
‘Not Mum, though?’ Sophie asked.
‘Of course your mum!’ said Gavin. ‘She’s an excellent shot.’
Tom and Sophie looked at each other. Daisy leaned in and said, ‘Better do what she says in future, eh?’
Now they had arrived at a large room next to an operating theatre. There were three white screens on one wall, lit from behind by small bulbs.
A split second later, Sophie and Tom’s mum walked in, holding a series of X-rays. There were three veterinary students behind her. Their mother already had scrubs on – a gown, hat and mask. She had pulled her mask down under her chin and was explaining something to one of the students.
Mrs Nightingale looked up and smiled at her children, then carried on talking.
‘So next up: Gareth the green mamba. Let’s have a look at these X-rays,’ she said, pinning five of the films side by side on the white screens.
‘Normally you just have one X-ray,’ Daisy said quietly to Tom and Sophie, ‘but with snakes you have to take one, then move the snake along, take another, move the snake along. Till you’ve X-rayed all of him. Then you stick the X-rays together.’