Yesss--more snakes

Well, March has finally slithered into the sunset. I have two apparently unrelated news stories to support that.

First, it’s not without regret (and some degree of suspicion) that I report the recapture of the Egyptian cobra by the Bronx Zoo. Zoo officials claim the snake was found in a dark corner, as they’d predicted all along.

I’m suspicious because of course that’s exactly what you’d expect them to say; people aren’t going to be falling all over themselves to visit the zoo if they think they may have a really close encounter with a venomous serpent. Plus, how hard would it be for the zoo folk to find another female cobra about the same age/size as the escapee and foist it off on the public? Do you remember that sequence in My Blue Heaven where the distraught DA accidently puts her kids’ turtle through the garbage disposal & then goes to the pet shop to find a replacement turtle so she won’t have to tell the boys where their pet went? 'Nuff said.

And I’m sad about the recapture because it’s bound to have a deleterious effect on the Twitter feed from BronxZoosCobra, which as of 1600 today has about 213K followers. That roving reptile had the rapier wit of a Dorothy Parker perfectly suited to the 140-character tweet format. In fact, I’m kind of surprised she (obviously a cosmopolitan girl with sleek lines and considerable discrimination) didn’t glide over the Algonquin and pay homage to the Round Table with a dry martini. With a straw, of course.

But the close encounters of the ophidian kind this month weren’t limited to the Big Apple. We here in the humble Silicon Valley have our very own story.

The Daily News of Palo Alto reported an incident of a snake discovered in the toilet of a Redwood City restaurant Tuesday evening.

Okay, it was a two-foot long gopher snake, and the Humane Society came and took it away before it could get its own Twitter account and report adventures up and down the Peninsula. But still…

Both the cobra and the gopher snake have been checked out by vets. The cobra’s in some kind of secluded undisclosed location in the zoo’s reptile house, while the gopher snake has been released into San Mateo. I’m guessing that it’ll find plenty of its kin there.

So March has wound and moulted its way to an end. We’ll see what April Fool’s Day brings to us.