by Adam Frost
‘So what’s eating Gareth?’ Mrs Nightingale asked. ‘Or what’s Gareth been eating?’
The three students peered at the X-rays. Sophie stood on tiptoes and looked over their shoulders.
A large white circle was visible about halfway along Gareth’s body.
‘Is it a retained egg?’ one of the students asked. ‘Maybe she laid all the others, but not that one?’
‘Can anyone tell me why that’s unlikely?’ Mrs Nightingale asked.
The students all looked at each other and then back at the X-rays.
‘Because Gareth’s not a girl,’ Sophie said quietly.
‘That’s right!’ exclaimed Mrs Nightingale. ‘The clue’s is in the name.’
The students looked at Sophie, and Sophie blushed and looked at the ground.
‘Any other guesses?’ Mrs Nightingale asked.
‘Does she – sorry, he –’ began another student.
Everyone tittered.
‘Could he have a tumour?’ the student asked.
‘That’s a better suggestion,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘Anyone agree with that?’
The other two students put their hands up, then put them down again, then put them up again.
‘It looks too solid for a tumour,’ one of them eventually said.
‘Plus, does he have any other symptoms of cancer?’ Mrs Nightingale asked.
The students all shook their heads.
‘Which leaves . . . ?’ Mrs Nightingale asked.
‘A foreign body,’ said one of the students hesitantly.
‘Correct!’ Mrs Nightingale said. ‘It looks to me like it could be a stone. So can anyone tell me why this most intelligent of creatures has swallowed a stone?’
‘Could he have thought it was a bird’s egg?’ one of the students asked.
Mrs Nightingale smiled and shook her head.
Sophie had an idea, but bit her tongue. Daisy could see that Sophie wanted to guess, so nudged her. ‘Go on,’ Daisy said, ‘she won’t bite. She ain’t a mamba, is she?’
‘Maybe,’ stammered Sophie, ‘maybe he was swallowing his prey. You know, a rat or whatever. But there was a pebble in his enclosure. Underneath the rat. And he swallowed both at the same time. By mistake.’
The students all looked impressed. ‘Yeah,’ one of them said, ‘it has to be that. Definitely.’
‘That is the right answer,’ Mrs Nightingale said. ‘Well done, Sophie. Everyone, this is my daughter. And that’s my son, Tom. Be nice to them and I’ll give you all a distinction.’
The students all said hello and smiled.
‘OK,’ Mrs Nightingale said. ‘Gavin, Daisy, time to scrub up.’
Chapter 9
Tom and Sophie stood behind a glass panel in the operating theatre alongside the student vets.
They could see the operation through the glass and on a large monitor in front of them. Mrs Nightingale was performing the operation and Gavin was assisting. Daisy was standing next to them, ready to advise.
Throughout the procedure Mrs Nightingale was describing what it was she was doing. Her voice came through a large speaker under the monitor. This meant that Tom, Sophie and the students could see and hear everything that was happening to the snake.
‘The mamba is now anaesthetised and I am ensuring a free flow of oxygen to the lungs,’ said Mrs Nightingale, her voice crackling over the speaker. ‘Notice that I am careful to avoid the fangs in case of a reflex bite.’
Tom and Sophie watched the monitor in fascination as their mother pushed a tube down the snake’s throat and hooked him up to an oxygen supply, just like a surgeon would with a person.
‘Now we make a small incision along the side of the snake. Never cut a snake across its belly or the wound will never heal. Every time it moves, the cut will open up,’ said Mrs Nightingale.
Tom and Sophie watched in wonder as their mother made a small neat cut along the side of the snake and the blood seeped out.
‘It’s red, just like ours,’ said Tom.
‘Well, what colour did you expect it to be?’ Sophie said.
‘Green, of course,’ said Tom.
‘A snake’s scales are made out of keratin,’ Mrs Nightingale continued. ‘Just like our hair and fingernails – so they grow back and heal fairly quickly. Snakes are used to getting cuts and nicks in the wild. Some constrictors even stretch their skin till it bursts when they eat something huge.’
‘Grim,’ muttered Sophie.
‘Their insides are more robust than ours generally,’ explained Mrs Nightingale. ‘Their organs are used to moving around and squeezing out of the way when something big gets swallowed. And remember, all of their organs are in a long line. They’re not side by side like ours. So their right kidney is under their left kidney.’
Sophie heard the students next to her whispering and scribbling away on their clipboards.
Soon Mrs Nightingale was removing the stone from the snake’s stomach with a pair of surgical forceps.
‘You’ll be OK, mate. You’re doing great,’ Daisy whispered to the snake.
Mrs Nightingale dropped the stone into a tin dish with a clink.
‘OK, time to close him up,’ she said. ‘Remember that animals are just like people – the longer you expose their insides to the air, the greater the risk of infection. So any surgery should be as swift as possible.’
‘If he swallowed me,’ Tom whispered to Sophie, ‘and someone cut me out, would I still be alive? Or would I be, like, half digested, with a weird zombie face?’
‘Shh, I want to see how Mum does this,’ Sophie said.
They watched their mother and Gavin unclamping the snake and stitching him up.
The students continued to sketch and scribble.
One of them was a young woman with long brown hair. She looked across at Sophie and said, ‘You want to be a vet like your mum?’
Sophie nodded and said, ‘A zoo vet though. Not a normal vet. I’m not really into cats and gerbils.’
The young woman smiled and said, ‘Just into the other hundred million species on the planet? Yeah, me too!’
When the operation was over, Mrs Nightingale came over to Tom and Sophie and said, ‘See you back at home, you two.’
Then she left the room with Gavin.
Daisy had taken off her surgical gear and was mopping her brow.
‘Man, those things are tense,’ she said, ‘but he’s going to be fine. Now, since we’re in the hospital, how would you like to see those snakes you rescued?’
‘Seriously?’ Sophie said, with a surprised expression.
‘I mean, they’re in quarantine,’ said Daisy, ‘so it’ll be look-but-don’t-touch, but still. Should be good, clean fun.’
‘Cool!’ Tom said.
They walked along a corridor and then through a pair of double doors.
‘Talking of clean fun,’ said Daisy, ‘first thing we have to do is get clean.’
They were in a small lobby with a washbasin against the wall, rows of boots on the floor, bottles of chemicals on shelves and gowns hanging up on hooks.
‘Animals in quarantine are kept completely separate,’ said Daisy. ‘Different vets, different rooms, different enclosures. Anyone going to see them has to be totally free of germs.’
‘Tom’s never free of germs,’ said Sophie.
‘Sophie is a germ,’ said Tom.
They scrubbed their hands with grainy blue soap and Daisy made them put on special boots. Then they put on overalls over their clothes before Daisy led them to a small yellow room with vivariums on all sides.
‘This is where the snakes will live for the next few months,’ said Daisy.
‘Are they all OK?’ Sophie asked.
‘They are now,’ said Daisy. ‘We rehydrated them all. Some of them had parasites so we’ve been treating them for that. Some have had medicine. Others have had a special spray on their skin. We’re steering clear of him though.’
She pointed to a golden snake with a jet-black
head in a large vivarium. It was crawling slowly over a rock. ‘He’s an inland taipan,’ Daisy explained, ‘the world’s most venomous snake. He’s only a metre and a half long, but one bite could kill an adult elephant. Stone dead. In about ten minutes.’
Tom and Sophie peered through the glass.
‘And we haven’t got the antivenin yet,’ Daisy added.
Tom and Sophie stepped back from the glass.
‘I know,’ Daisy said. ‘It’s like working with explosives sometimes. Next door we’ve got an Antiguan racer. One of the world’s rarest snakes. Only a few hundred left in the wild. I’m so unbelievably glad you found her.’
Daisy looked at the taipan again, then smiled at Tom and Sophie.
‘Over here, we’ve got your old friend the king cobra,’ she continued. ‘Did you know they’re cannibals? His primary diet in the wild is other snakes, including cobras. In here he has to make do with mice though, don’t you, Colin?’
She turned to the next case along.
‘Here’s our black mamba,’ she said. ‘The fastest snake in the world. Reaches speeds of fourteen miles per hour. And here’s our married couple. Two long-nosed vipers. A male in that vivarium and a female in that one.’
Sophie looked at the female viper curled up in a corner of the enclosure.
‘Are those holes in the vivarium so she can breathe?’ Sophie asked.
‘Yes, we’d have to move her if she was pregnant though, or her babies could squeeze through those holes when they were born. And talking of babies . . .’
She beckoned Tom and Sophie over to a vivarium next to the door.
‘This one is a banded krait,’ she said.
Tom and Sophie stared at a long, slender snake with bright black and yellow stripes. Its head was held back in an S-shape as it investigated a hollowed-out branch.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Sophie murmured.
‘Yes, and she laid some eggs this morning,’ said Daisy, ‘so soon we should have even more of them.’
‘Wow!’ said Tom, peering through the glass. ‘So where’s she hiding the eggs?’
‘We took them off to incubate them,’ said Daisy.
‘Don’t you let her keep them?’ said Tom.
Daisy shook her head.
‘It’s better if we take them,’ she said. ‘You see, snakes aren’t always the best parents in the world. Normally they lay their eggs in a nice spot and leave them. As soon as the eggs hatch, they scarper. Partly because, if they stayed around, they might get eaten by their own mum and dad.’
‘Whoa!’ Tom said. ‘And I thought Mum and Dad were annoying!’
‘Plus, you know,’ Daisy went on, ‘baby snakes can look after themselves. They’re born with all their venom. They may be only a fraction of the size of their mothers, but their bite is just as deadly. You’d never guess from looking at them though. Come on, I’ll show you.’
Tom and Sophie could barely contain their excitement.
Daisy led them down a corridor, through a series of treatment rooms and into a laboratory lined with small plastic incubators humming gently.
‘Look, look, those ones have just hatched,’ Daisy whispered.
‘Are they from the banded krait?’ Sophie asked.
‘No, they’re from our false water cobra,’ said Daisy.
Tom and Sophie were looking at six small white eggs, longer and softer than chickens’ eggs. Three of the eggs had a snake’s head sticking out of the top. Two others just had tongues flickering in and out.
‘When are they actually going to come out?’ Tom asked.
‘Oh, they might sit like that for a few days,’ said Daisy, ‘biding their time. First they just stick their tongue out, like those two, smelling and sensing what’s out there, checking for predators. Then they stick their head out, taking in the scenery. The weirdest thing is, they’re each about twenty centimetres long in there.’
‘No way!’ exclaimed Tom.
‘Really?’ said Sophie.
‘I know it sounds impossible,’ said Daisy. ‘I mean – how do they curl up so tightly and fit themselves into that small egg? But somehow they do. And why? Because snakes are incredible, kids. The most incredible animals on the planet.’
Chapter 10
That evening, on the houseboat, all Tom and Sophie could talk about was snakes. How snakes keep growing their whole lives and how their hearts are in a different place every day and how they can’t even move in the morning until they warm up. It was all Mrs Nightingale could do to get them to eat their dinner.
‘And after we saw you do the operation,’ said Sophie, ‘we saw the snakes in quarantine too.’
‘Yeah,’ said Tom. ‘One of the ones we saved was pregnant!’
‘And we saw some other eggs that a snake had laid, and their heads were poking out,’ said Sophie.
‘All right, all right,’ said Mr Nightingale, ‘we get it. You had a good day. But can we talk about something else now?’
‘How about Komodo dragons?’ suggested Tom.
‘No,’ said Mrs Nightingale. ‘No more reptiles.’
‘What about poisonous tree frogs?’ Sophie asked.
‘Or amphibians,’ said Mrs Nightingale.
‘OK, let’s talk about humans,’ said Sophie, ‘specifically me and Tom. When can we get a snake?’
Mr Nightingale smiled and groaned at the same time.
‘We’re going to need a bigger boat,’ he said.
Later on, Sophie was reading about Antiguan racers on the internet. Tom was sitting behind her on the sofa, reading The Little Book of Big Snakes.
‘I can’t believe that man on the barge had stolen an Antiguan racer,’ Sophie said, pointing at a webpage. ‘He must have known they’re almost extinct.’
‘He was a slimeball all right,’ Tom said, still looking at his book.
‘Still, it says here there’s a breeding programme in Antigua,’ Sophie added. ‘They’re trying to build their numbers up again. We should tell Daisy about it.’
‘Yeah, OK,’ said Tom. ‘I was going to tell Daisy something else too.’
‘What?’ asked Sophie.
‘Well, I was reading about long-nosed vipers in here –’ he held his book open on a double-page spread of photos depicting a long-nosed viper swallowing a shrew. ‘Apparently it’s really hard to tell when they’re pregnant, but I think that viper in quarantine might have been. Look at this picture. They’re usually wider than a regular snake, right? But here it’s even fatter.’
‘Maybe,’ said Sophie.
‘And think about it,’ said Tom. ‘It was in one of those pillowcases with a male long-nosed viper. You remember what happened when we bought Felicity the ferret a friend and Georgina turned out to be a George. We got baby ferrets. I reckon the same would happen with snakes!’
‘We’ll tell her in the morning then,’ said Sophie.
‘Maybe we should tell her now,’ said Tom. ‘Don’t you remember? Those breathing holes were pretty big. And look at this picture.’
Tom pointed at a photo of a long-nosed viper snakelet.
‘They can’t be more than five millimetres wide,’ said Tom. ‘They’re much smaller than the holes on the box.’
‘So what?’ replied Sophie. ‘Even if she lays eggs, they’re not going to hatch overnight.’
‘She doesn’t lay eggs,’ said Tom, ‘she’s ovov— ovoviv— this word here.’
Sophie said, ‘Ovoviviparous.’
‘It means she gives birth to live snakes in little sacs,’ said Tom. ‘They wriggle out of the sacs and off they go.’
‘They’ll be able to escape,’ whispered Sophie.
‘And they’ll be just as venomous as their mum from the moment they’re born,’ Tom added.
Tom and Sophie ran into the kitchen, where their parents were washing up.
‘Mum! Dad! We need Daisy’s phone number! Now!’ declared Sophie.
‘Oh, blooming henry, what now?’ Mr Nightingale groaned.
‘The zo
o’s closed,’ said Mrs Nightingale.
Tom and Sophie explained.
‘You’re sure about this?’ Mr Nightingale asked.
‘Ring Daisy,’ Mrs Nightingale said. ‘I’ll go and take a look.’
She picked up a torch and Tom and Sophie walked quickly with their mother along the towpath.
Slicing through the darkness with the torch’s beam, they crossed the bridge that led to the zoo and went through the staff entrance.
Horace was already waiting to meet them at the reptile house.
‘Daisy just phoned me,’ he said. ‘It’s funny, cos I was just about to check on that viper. I had the same feeling as you two.’
‘Were we right?’ asked Tom.
Horace nodded. ‘I’ve just been in. I reckon she’s about to pop. Give her another hour or so.’
‘I knew it!’ exclaimed Tom.
‘I’ve replaced the metal grille on her enclosure with a sheet of glass,’ said Horace. ‘If those snakelets had wriggled out, that would NOT have been nice. You did good, kids.’
‘Can we watch, Mum? Go on, go on,’ Tom pleaded.
Mrs Nightingale looked at her watch. ‘Well, it’s technically way past your bedtime,’ she said.
‘But we did stop those snakes from escaping,’ Tom said, ‘sort of. Horace would have been bitten to death. Maybe.’
Mrs Nightingale sighed and nodded.
So Tom and Sophie got to watch Lydia the long-nosed viper give birth to seven beautiful slithery venomous snakelets. They plopped out in slippery sacs and soon burst through.
Daisy arrived just in time to see the happy event. She quickly took the snakelets out of the vivarium with a mini snake hook.
Mrs Nightingale inspected them through the glass and said, ‘They look happy and healthy. We can have a better look at them all in the morning. Don’t forget to weigh and measure them, Daisy.’
She turned to look at Tom and Sophie. ‘Bed!’
Chapter 11