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 zoo’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!’