Published: August 1, 2000

Food For Thought

A few days ago, my son’s snake ate a mouse. The mouse was alive.

We haven’t had this serpent, an albino cornsnake of the constricting type, for very long, and as a family we’d never done any live feeding. One bright, cloudless Saturday, however, my four children and I set off to the pet store to buy pinkies—pre-frozen neonatal mice. The saleswoman there, a maternal, kindly woman who was rehabilitating an injured reticulated python at home, helpfully suggested, “They really like...