Snakes!

Sam Snake, Cornelia, and the Kids

I originally owned four corn snakes: Sam and Cornelia, who produced four clutches of eggs and a good few hatchlings, plus Murphy (one of their female hatchlings from 1998) and Cobb (an unrelated male, also born in 1998). Cornelia died in 2007, Sam in 2012; as of 2016 Cobb and Murphy are still in good health, though getting on in years. Since I don't want to update all of the pages linked here a lot of what follows is out of date - most of the links to other sites are probably dead.

Putting together my collection of Victorian magazines and interest in snakes, I've found a nice article about the snakes at London Zoo in 1893, and another about snake-charming. Be warned, both include a LOT of graphics. There's also a rather nice cartoon, from The Strand Magazine for January 1892. Click on the image to the right to see it.

Having a pet, for the first time in many years, led to some odd surprises; one of them was the discovery that there was no pets newsgroups specifically for the UK. Once I'd found out how the system worked, I started to lobby for the formation of a group, which became uk.rec.pets.misc; I've put the documents that led to its formation on this web site.

I've also found many new friends on the pets newsgroups and on Slither, a mailing list for snake owners. This site is part of the Slither Web Ring which links Slither subscribers. I've put some other useful links for pet owners on another page.

I work in a school and we've found it useful to incorporate Sam into one of our lessons in a topic on classification (of species etc.) which involves habitat, evolutionary processes, etc., for pupils in year 7 (11-12 years old); I've also used it for pupils at one of our local junior schools, and with some modifications for A-Level biology. I've written a lesson plan for this, meeting the requirements of the UK National Curriculum etc., which may be of use for other schools. For copyright reasons I have not been able to include the illustrations. Note that a few terms used here may be unfamiliar in other countries; in particular

'Support' means pupils of lower ability, who may need help with lessons.
When describing "cold-blooded" animals, "Poikilothermic" is used in preference to "endothermic".
When describing "warm-blooded" animals, "Homeothermic" is used in preference to "exothermic".

Last change 26/1/99 adding Victorian cartoon.