REMINISCENCES FROM THE MELBOURNE ZOO. 
37 
predicament. The next time a goat had to be given to a snake the 
keepers saved themselves from a repetition of this unenviable task by 
removing the callous part of the victim’s horns before serving it up. 
WHAT MIGHT BE CALLED A BLANKETY YARN. 
To-day the snake houses are heated by a hot-water pipe system. 
Snakes can stand as much heat as any living creature, but do not endure 
cold well. Thus the winter would see a high mortality among the Zoo 
specimens if some way were not devised of giving the cold-blooded 
creatures artificial warmth. Now they snugly coil themselves up under 
the hot water pipes and, secure from observation — for there is more than 
man that loves darkness rather than light — they hibernate until Spring 
calls to them as well as to most other living things with a voice that is 
irresistible. Not always, however, have the petted reptiles at the Zoo 
had their houses warmed after the most approved American fashion. 
Time was when, like mice and most men, they had to be content with 
less aristocratic apparatus for thawing the winter’s chill. Certain 
pythons had come to the Zoo in boxes snugly lined with soft blankets. 
When it was seen how they coiled luxuriously underneath these blankets, 
it was arranged to allow the pythons to keep their comforts for sleeping 
hours. One of them, however, managed to get his covering into such 
a mass of tattered rags that it was decided to present him with a new 
pair that would yield much greater warmth. To this end a large pair 
of double-bed blankets of superfine quality were given to him at sundown 
one night, and he was left to make himself as comfortable as he wished. 
Next morning one of the keepers sought out Mr. Wilkie. 
“Did you take those new blankets away from that python?” 
“No,” was the reply. “Haven’t you? I noticed they were gone 
half an hour ago.” 
“I haven’t touched them,” said the keeper, “and I can’t see them 
in the cage.” 
Together they went to investigate, and then they found that although 
they could not see the blankets, they were undoubtedly still in the cage. 
The python had made a change in his usual habits. Instead of coiling 
the blankets around himself, in his customary way, he had coiled him- 
self around the blankets in so effectual a way that they could never again 
be separated. He had mistaken the soft, woolly things that stretched 
in his grip for the sheep from which they had been shorn, and had made 
a meal of them. It took nearly six months for that python to get back 
his usual graceful figure, and until he did he slept on the blankets in a 
far more literal sense than he had been meant to do. In the South 
