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More about my trip to the zoo in Greenville, South Carolina…

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Billy Bob

Sometimes, you run across zoo enclosures that contain more than one species of animal. At the Greenville Zoo, for example, the alligator compound also is home to alligator snapping turtles. Apparently, the animals are simpatico.

Maybe that explains why, after I left the gators and turtles behind and arrived at the toucan enclosure, I didn’t question why a large black snake was inside the cage.

My first thought: hmmm, who knew snakes and toucans are compatible? You learn something every day.

My next thought: hey, wait a minute. The openings in that cage wire are huge. It might stop a python or a boa, but not the snake I’m looking at.

Whereupon, I concluded that the snake must have escaped from its enclosure and was wandering loose. Maybe the staff didn’t know it yet. Or, maybe a frantic search was underway.

The snake didn’t seem to be going anywhere, and the toucan was resting on a perch, ignoring both the snake and me, so I decided to find a zoo employee and report this perplexing turn of events.

The first employee I found was a clerk at the snack bar. “Excuse me,” I said through the order window, “There’s a snake, a large black snake, inside the toucan cage. Surely a snake doesn’t belong there.”

“No, he doesn’t,” the man said, reaching for his walkie talkie. “Sir, you may have saved the life of a toucan today.” I suspect he meant it facetiously.

“Margaret,” he said into the walkie talkie.

“Yes?”

“A guest spotted a snake in the toucan enclosure.”

“Okay. I got it.”

This was getting interesting. I thanked the clerk and hurried back to the toucan cage.

I arrived just as two female zoo employees were assessing things. “Rat snake,” said one. The other nodded.

“Uh… were you looking for him?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s a wild snake, not one of ours,” one of the women said. “They’re common around here.”

“It’s a black rat snake,” said the other woman. “They’re very beneficial. They hold down the population of mice, rats, and other pests. We’re grateful to have ’em.

“But they’re silent and sneaky, and they eat eggs, so we have to keep an eye on ’em.”

While one of the women went into the enclosure to bag the snake, the other explained that the zoo knows of about 15 or 20 wild rat snakes now in residence.

“We bag ’em, measure ’em, log the capture, and release ’em away from the exhibits,” she said.

“Hey,” yelled the woman inside the enclosure, “This is Billy Bob! I haven’t seen him in a while!”

“Some of ’em have names,” the first woman told me. “You get to know ’em after a while.”

“In fact,” she went on, “We’re thinking about micro-chippin’ ’em. That would allow us to track ’em.”

The woman inside the cage, still struggling to get Billy Bob into the bag, called out, “I vote that we micro-chip ’em! Then we can name ’em ALL!”

She finally got Billy Bob secured. The two employees departed, and I moved on to the petting zoo, where I watched a worker hose down the goats.