R.I.P. Squeak (1999 to 2013)
Greetings! I’m Squeak and I live with Matt, Yudit, Stella and Meep. I am a 5-foot Californian snow corn snake – Elaphe guttata.
I have lived with Matt and Yudit since 1999 – I was about 4 months old and have grown a lot in that time, I was only a few inches long in those days. I have never escaped from my vivarium, although not for want of trying! However when they let me out for a play I do like to see if I can go down the back of the sofa, into clothing or I’ll curl around in Yudit’s hair as its long…
I eat a couple of adult mice every two to three weeks and do not like the cold much – I tend to get a bit lethargic in the winter if my heating is not kept on. I have never been ill but I have had to got to the vet three times – once for a general check-up, once time because I scratched my eye when trying to get out of the vivarium (no permanent damage) and once when I didn’t quite complete shedding my skin at the tip of my tail. At this last visit it was finally confirmed that I’m male and like many adolescent males, I’m already thinking about breeding!
A note on etymology
For those who are curious as to the origin of my name – it’s really quite simple. Elaphe guttata, the corn snakes, are a species of rat snakes. From this, you can understand that our prime diet is, well, rat! Therefore, in the wild, you could say that we are the death of rats. Captialise that and you get “Death of Rats”. This is the name of a fragment of the grim reaper (“Death”) from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series of novels. “Squeak” is the limit of Death of Rat’s vocabulary – and where I got my name from. So there you go!
Message from Matt and Yudit
Keeping snakes is a lot of fun and we would not be without Squeak. However they are a commitment and you must only get a snake once you have spent time considering the fact that they have special requirements and that they can get very big. That being said, we wanted more reptiles, and acquired Meep. They can easily become addictive…
