Tuesday, May 03, 2005
The Passing of Nibblets
With sadness, we announce the passing of Nibblets, one of our oldest snakes. Nibblets was an amelanistic (sometimes known as "red albino") corn snake (
Elaphe guttata). He was one of our original four corn snakes that we imported from a university student in Pennsylvania by the name of Ryan Arner. We obtained these four baby corn snakes in 1994 when we started doing our educational programs. Cream, Cob, and Kernel were the others; Nibblets was the last one to go, at the age of 11. This is fairly old for a corn snake, though some do live longer.
Nibblets was a regular in our programs, and it would be reasonable to estimate that he was held by somewhere between 50 and 100 thousand people over the years. He also appeared in at least a few newspapers along the way, in the hands of smiling children.
We planted a tree on Sunday, a Red Pine to represent his colours, as a memorial. Actually, we planted about 20, since we had to plant them anyway...
Nibblets is survived by Husk, Silk, Stalk, Peaches, Ear, Sweet and quite a few other corn snakes, some of which still need names. Eventually, we'll probably name another one Nibblets, but not for a while, and the original will always be remembered.
So farewell, Nibblets, and thank you for years of service in helping to convince people to respect, or even like, snakes. We'll miss you!
Posted by Jeff Hathaway at 10:27 AM | Comments (1)
