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petologist by the shoulder and wouldn't let go until it was pried o¤.
This particular species of python has several long teeth meant for grasp-
ing, and one tooth must have hit a small blood vessel in his shoulder
because blood was everywhere. Fortunately for me—I guess—I was at
the opposite end of the procession, though at that end snake shit was
everywhere, including all over me. The herpetologist never forgave
Glenn for allowing the snake to bite him. The rest of us, however, were
with the snake, secretly thinking a bit of justice had been done.
The herpetologist took great pleasure in feeding his charges. He pre-
ferred to use live food, whether necessary or not. A whole, live rooster
went to each of the big pythons and anacondas. Rats, mice, “pinks”
(newborn mice), and day-old cheeping chicks were fed to all the smaller
species. He enjoyed throwing live white rats into the alligator swamp
to see if any could swim to the side before the alligators got them. The
herpetologist's feeding frenzies were definitely not something I liked
to watch.
Because Herald wanted to squeeze as many exhibits as possible into
our limited space, the venomous reptile exhibits were poorly designed
from the standpoint of safety, with cages stacked in two tiers one foot
apart. Cleaning the glass or removing snake shit required great skill
and care to avoid being bitten. In order to work on the upper level of
cages, you had to stand on a one-foot-wide plank two feet o¤ the floor,
which made jumping backward quite dangerous. Besides, the concrete
wall opposite the cages was only four feet away, which meant there
simply wasn't enough room to escape if an aggressive, venomous snake
got out.
Periodically we had a snake-bite drill. When the alarm went o¤, we
would time how many minutes it took to get from the aquarium to
the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center, where the
antivenins were kept.
Herald felt that in my position as assistant curator I should also
be able to work with all the animals at the aquarium, and he asked me
to begin working with the reptiles. I, however, did not agree. When
Herald hired me from Marineland of the Pacific, he did so because of
the marine exhibits I'd set up there. I was stubborn: if he hired me to
do the aquatic exhibits, that is what I should do.
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