Careful Where You Cut

Putting this off does not change the reality. Sister III, our third snake, is dead. She did not die by neglect like the first who escaped and showed up the last day of school only to die over the summer due to overheating. She did not die by bacterial infection like the second one who never had a chance since she never ate while with us for less than two months and had to be taken to the vet. Sister III died under my supervision while we were searching for her.

Just when I thought we were going to be successful in our care of a snake things turned. Sister III loved to hide from the beginning. She did the same thing at Petsmart and kept her same behavior with us. She escaped once and we found her as documented in a previous blog. Then she went a week without eating. Then she found a way to get into her plastic tree and hide. I did the flour routine again and she came out one night, left a trail and there was flour around the hole where she went back in. Almost a week went by and she did not come back out – not even when I put a mouse by the hole and left it out overnight. I was afraid she had died or was sick inside the tree.

I had the bright idea to enlist two of my students who were in my class for Falcon Break – 45 minutes of remediation torture – while the rest of the students have break in the gym. We probed the tree with a wire and did not stir the snake. We decided to cut off some of the branches. Just as one of the branches fell Bobby said there she is. He spotted her in the hole. I crafted a hook with the wire and excitedly drew her out. The excitement ended when I saw her on the table with no head. Yes in our enthusiasm we had cut off her head. My good idea went bad. Be careful where you cut.

The only thing to do was make it a learning experience and teach the students how to mix a 9 to 1 water to formaldehyde solution and preserve her for observation and learning. The students later had all sorts of questions and we made the most of a bad situation.
Not my finest hour as a teacher. We will not have any more snakes for some time.

The cycle of life and death is quite a phenomenon and even tougher when it is accelerated by our hands. Fortunately cutting is not always lethal. I had an amaryllis bulb at the front display table that bloomed before Christmas. Over the break the blooms died. The kids were all concerned and asked why it died. I told them it was a part of the natural process. Flowers bloom, die, drop their seeds and the cycle continues. I cut the old stalks and now a new stalk is growing and will bloom. It will be a fitting memorial for Sister III.