Red, White, or Scaly?
Snakes in a wine chiller
No, it's not a horror movie. It's a successful wildlife rescue in Lake County
By Sheryl DeVore, Chicago Tribune
January 29, 2012
Dozens of snakes slumbering the winter away underneath abandoned railroad tracks faced a wake-up call that could have proved fatal.
A construction crew was preparing to repair the tracks near the decommissioned Zion Nuclear Power Station — work that would have disrupted their hibernation and exposed them to the frigid cold of a winter's morning.
But thanks to two biologists and a schoolteacher with a warm spot for reptiles, nearly 200 garter, brown and western fox snakes have a new temporary home — a 6-foot-tall wine chiller in Lake Forest. The snakes now occupy the dark cool spaces usually reserved for fine chardonnays and cabernets.
"The wine chiller acts as an artificial hibernating den," said Rob Carmichael, curator of the Wildlife Discovery Center in Lake Forest. "It can be set right at the temperature snakes need to survive in winter — about 48 degrees."
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-snake-chiller-20120128,0,1973022.story
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