Baby Corn Snake Arrives

He isn’t on exhibit quite yet, but Pacific Science Center’s Life Sciences staff recently welcomed a new corn snake into our program. Our new guy is still a baby by any measure. He weighs just 17 and a half grams – about the size of the mice our older corn snakes eat. He eats a pinkie mouse every two to three days, and is so small we can see the bump from the mouse in his tummy for several hours after.

Our snake was a gift from the Avian and Exotic Veterinary Hospital who kept him as a hatchling and helped him eat his first few meals – sometimes difficult until they get the hang of it.

For such a recent hatchling, our new snake is already showing a desire to get out and see the world. Last weekend, the staff member in charge closed his cage, and doubled back to check that it was secure. Everything looked good. The cage lid was snapped closed, and the extra mesh we had added to keep him from slithering through any crack was tightly in place.


By the next morning when we did our opening rounds to check on him, he wasn’t there. Somehow he had pushed through an air hole in the lid which was still tightly in place. He must have then slithered off the cabinet and gone – where?

Searching for a snake calls for persistence, creativity and delicate touch. You can’t drag a piece of furniture to look behind it – the snake would be crushed if he were underneath. Snakes curl up into surprisingly small spaces, or stretch out long and hide in very narrow cracks. We checked under every cabinet and inside the drawers. We checked behind the wallboards, the file cabinets and even the paperwork. We sifted through the trashcan, looked in all the pockets of our scrub coats and sifted the bedding in all the insects’ cages. No sign of our missing corn snake.



Snakes can climb up surprising distances if they have anything to use for traction. They can also slide into small holes, in some cases the diameter of a pencil. Could he have gone into an air vent? Down the drain? Into the thermostat?



We thought we had checked all the towels. In fact, Sarah was in the room when Brianna carefully unfolded each one, with no sign of a snake. Yet this was where we eventually found him, three days later. One of our snake presenters, Amanda, spotted him when she took a towel out to line a carrier for one of our other snakes!



The little guy was thirsty and drank close to half a teaspoon of water, which is a lot for his size. Then he ate a pinkie and curled up to rest. While he rested, we doubled up his security. The big world may seem exciting to him, but our snake would face many dangers out there, and we want to keep him where he can be safe and well cared for.