Welcome to Snake-tacular, the only place in Greensboro with over 50 different venomous snakes under one roof.
This two-day event drew crowds of parents and young children to the Greensboro Natural Science Center, located on Lawndale Drive. Reptiles exhibited boasted endearing names like Creamsicle Corn and convoluted titles like Hypomelanistic Brooks King.
CCE student Ron Key’s collection of venomous snakes was showcased as the main feature of the exhibit. Key brought nearly 50 serpents, from commonplace reptiles like the Northern Copperhead and Cottonmouth to exotic creatures like the thick-bodied Gaboon Viper and coppery Fer-de-Lance.
Other notables of Key’s collection included a Malaysian King Cobra nearly 10 feet long, six different types of rattlesnake, and 10 other varieties of cobra, including two breeds of spitting cobra. Also included among the serpents were a Banded Krait, a black mamba, a green mamba, and several coral snakes.
Besides live reptiles, Snake-tacular hosted activities, such as having a picture taken with a reptile for two dollars. A feature described only as “Ssstory Telling” was offered for children on the museum’s second floor, and paper headband cobra hats were present in every color found in Nature – and many that aren’t. Along with the cobra hats, many children sported facepaint or armpaint in a variety of snaky shapes and colors.
The Natural Science Center also boasts a Herpetarium featuring a collection of poisonous and non-poisonous snakes, thumb-sized poison frogs, a monitor lizard, a salamander, and a Pancake Tortoise.
A Herpetology lab in the basement section also featured several reptiles, including an albino snake held by one of the volunteers that brave children could ask to pet. Overlooking the small menagerie is the 15-foot skeleton of a Burmese python, kin to the Albino python that was the centerpiece of the contest to guess the snake’s weight.
What is a visit to a museum without spending time in the gift shop? The “Thesaurus Shoppe,” named for the dinosaurs featured in the parking lot, offers the whole range of museum merchandise: toys, jewelry both genuine and plastic, gemstones, astronomy, archaeology, and physics equipment, and stuffed animals.
The Snake-tacular exhibit ended Sept. 21 at 4:00 p.m., but the Natural Science Center still displays its snake collection to the public at just five dollars per ticket for Guilford students.