isoglossia

Adam’s aunt, my sister, thought it would be a good idea to send him a SNAKE EGG for Christmas. Her package, full of good stuff otherwise, arrived just hours before we were departing for our our trip to Poland, so coupled with that and the inherent horror of a Chinese SNAKE EGG the thing sort of got put on the back burner, by which I mean put away in a reinforced steel cell deep in an underground bunker. But somehow Adam found it and began agitating to hatch the egg. And once that boy begins agitating, well, eggs are going to hatch and no one is getting any rest until they do. So Adam and I decided that hatching a SNAKE EGG would be a good weekend project, a little bonding exercise, Cats-In-The-Cradle etc.

Fortunately, Adam is exactly 3+.

According to the box, it appeared to be a trivial thing to follow the manufacturer’s instructions for make pet hasten out of the shell. Throughout the entire process, we were careful to keep the full water into the container.

The box’s side panel helpfully chides the hatcher not to swallow the egg. Fortunately, we were able to safely immobilize Adam with some long tongs and a snare-pole, and pry it from his disarticulated lower jaw just in time.

Here he prepares to begin the experiment:

Fortunately, we had the appropriate laboratory glassware in the house for this project.

Adam was extremely impatient during this phase of the hatching. He obsessively checked the egg every two minutes or so for the first four minutes, after which he forgot all about the horrid snake egg and threw himself back into Thomas The Tank Engine’s deathless embrace.

When that video was over, he recalled his incubating responsibilities and rushed over to indicate the egg with the relentlessness of a true scientist. Then it was time for supper. Magda had made some nice chicken curry, but Adam opted to strangle and swallow whole an adult goat, which he digested over the next several weeks.

“Papa! Somefing happenin’!”

By the next morning, the snake was beginning to emerge from the ovum, which peeled away with a leathery wretchedness.

As soon as his transparent, permanently-closed reptilian eyelids had not snapped open that morning, Adam rushed to the kitchen to check on his snake. Well, okay, he rushed to the kitchen after leisurely awakening, having a wee, and then being languidly carried thither as per routine to get his usual sippy cup of yogurt and in the course of all this he incidentally noticed that a horrible slimy creature he had completely forgotten about had spent the long night inexorably breaking its way out of its miserable shell. ‘Hasten’ might be stretching it, but it was well within the 12-24 hour window promised by its child-labor manufacturers half a world away.

Note the egg tooth.

Like any good herpetologist, Adam takes time to document the animal’s lifecycle.

Once fully hatched, the snake was relocated to a more roomy container, which he quickly outgrew. Magda then moved him to the enormous pickle jar she uses to make kisli ogorki.

Here the snake settles into his final incubation station.

The increase in size continued over several days, but when it seemed to have peaked we dumped out the snake and his turgid water. Adam declined invitations to hold, or even touch, his new pet, pictured here next to his original hatchery.

This project has brought us closer together than ever! Thanks Auntie!

This weekend we’ll be doing some other, less odious, egg-related projects.