Bronx Zoo Cobra Alive and Well…and Ready for her Close Up
The national snake hunt is now hissstory! After a six-day search for an Egyptian cobra, the director of the Bronx Zoo told a relieved city that the snake was found in a non-public area of the zoo’s reptile house.
The poisonous snake disappeared from a Bronx Zoo exhibit and caught the nation’s attention as it spent nearly a week on the lam. One clever snake fan even created a fake Twitter account and posted dispatches from the runaway reptile.
Bronx Zoo director Jim Breheny says the snake was found right where zookeepers expected — still inside the reptile house, coiled in a dark corner. During the time of her disappearance, keepers searched for the 20-inch snake three times a day. Breheny says patience was the zoo’s greatest tool. During a press conference last Thursday, he said once she felt comfortable to explore her environment he knew they’d find her.
Now that the celebrity snake has made a name for herself she needs a name. The as yet unnamed cobra may be called Houdini for her surprising escape or perhaps Cleopatra.
This is not the first great snake escape. Vanity Fair lists a few others in recent memory.
Dan Malone, a herpetologist at the John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids, Michigan told Mlive.com that snakes are natural escape artists. Even though every zoo has strict venomous snake handling policies, the Bronx Zoo hasn’t yet said how the sneaky cobra escaped.
Because she is so small — weighing only 3 ounces — the pencil-thin snake could have slipped between panes of glass in her enclosure, slithered through a grate or screen cover or just taken advantage of human error.
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