‘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.