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| Name: |
Rocket
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Age: |
Nineteen years old
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| Gender: |
Female
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Kind: |
Albino Black Rat Snake
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| Home: |
Springfield, Missouri, USA
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Rocket is a rat snake I bought way back in 1996 as a hatchling. She has been with me since I was in college. She has even been a mom, she laid a clutch of eggs in 2001 after I paired her up with another rat snake. Rocket's been with me through a lot of good times and a lot of bad times. She's as gentle as they come too. She's a pretty remarkable snake. Still truckin' after 19 years, too. Not bad!
I bought Rocket 19 years ago from very good friends of mine who run a local Serpentarium. They sell reptiles and have an exhibit as well. I have been friends with them now for over 20 years. They are like my reptile mentors.
Rocket had just hatched recently and hadn't even eaten her first meal. She could coil up in the palm of my hand--that's how small she was. I had a lot of trouble getting her started eating, but once she did, she was (and still is) a pig! I don't know who bred her or anything, but I remember I paid around twenty dollars for her though.
I did snake talks back then (this was 1996, I did them the whole time I worked at the public library from about 1995 to 1998), and Rocket often came because I wanted to show kids how little a baby snake was, and also what an albino looked like. My other two "show snakes" were Corn snakes that were a couple of years old. Little kids could pass them around. Later, when Rocket got bigger, I let kids hold her too. She's always been gentle with everyone, strangers don't really matter to her.
I don't do snake talks that much anymore, and now that she's older, I wouldn't take her if I did any. I feel like it's better to show the younger snakes. Snakes do get tired after being passed around. I belong to the local Herpetological Society, and we sometimes do a day at the zoo or somewhere similar where we invite kids to touch and even handle reptiles. I used to take her to those too. I could always be confident that she'd not bite or anything.
Now she just kind of relaxes in her aquarium and eats every couple of weeks. As an adult I've not really measured her, but she's a good four feet (1.2 meters) at least. That's about average for a black rat snake, though I think the record is something like nine feet!
The way she got her name is cool, too. I had her at a snake talk when she was still a baby, and she was very squirmy and didn't like to hold very still. I had just gotten her and had not named her yet. Of course the kids (this was a first grade class, I believe) thought she had to have a name. One little boy said: "Name her Rocket, because it looks like she's trying to take off!" It stuck.
So that's the story of Rocket. Hopefully she will be with me for many more years. The longevity record for a black rat snake (Latin name Pantherophis obsoletus) stands at about 22 years right now. Maybe she will break that record. I hope so.
Talk about Rocket in Pet Talk!
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