At just four months of age, Sammy the Snake suffered a terrible loss: his mother was run over by a motorcycle as she tried to cross the road in sunny Milford State Park in Kansas where they lived. It being such a critical time for mother-son bonding, the park ranger hoped another female snake would adopt Sammy, but they all just slithered away. So the nurturing ranger decided to find a caretaker for Sammy outside the serpent family.
Luckily, the ranger heard that the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas had successfully paired an orphaned pot-bellied pig with a mouse. Hoping for a similar outcome, the ranger moved Sammy to the University’s Student Farm and then found a mouse that lived behind the cafeteria, the one that the food workers had named Morty.
Why a mouse? Mice might not seem like the most caring of animals, but years of research have demonstrated that their level of altrusim is just less than that of ninth-grade humans, a species well known for empathy. Mice remember other mice, they know left turns from right turns in mazes, and they twitch their whiskers in distinct, emotional rhythms when sizing up other species. So, mice bonding with other animals is not so unlikely, especially with snakes, who are bright and expressive and rely so heavily on their tongues.
Still, the attempt to pair the two didn’t start out well. When they first met, Sammy chased Morty around the water dish, coiling and rising up to appear as threatening as possible. Morty fled — as mouse instincts demand — and burrowed in the mulch for hours, hoping that Sammy’s sensitive tongue would not detect him.
After one-hundred-twenty-four days of wary gestures and tentative tongue-flicks, the pair finally accepted each other, and the effort proved to be worth its danger-filled beginning.
“I still remember the day Morty gave the sniff of death to a vole that Sammy was about to consume,” said Dr. Peter Martin of the University’s Deep Well Biology Lab and known to his colleagues as “Uncle Petrie.” As Dr. Martin would later testify, “We knew they were truly goombahs when they started to sleep cuddled up together. I must admit, we were concerned that Sammy would coil up and crush Morty by mistake!”
Once the bond was made, snake and mouse were inseparable. Being noctural, they would nap together in the day and move about at night, hunting for food. Morty would rest his bristly tail on Sammy’s scaly back as they explored the enclosure and searched for snacks. The staff expected Sammy to imitate the food-gathering habits of the more-experienced Morty, but instead the mouse became the copycat, even attempting to snare a cricket (not typically part of a mouse’s diet).
The well-meaning University Student Farm had always planned to reintroduce Sammy to his family in the park where he was born. But as he was being readied for release, Sammy became ill from a twisted intestine, and Morty disappeared. Veterinarians were unable to save Sammy and could not locate Morty. Sammy was just fifteen months into what might have been a fifteen-year lifespan.
The staff of the University of Kansas Student Farm were heartbroken, of course, but they all share the hope that Morty has survived to make other warm interspecies friendships. But so far, other than some moldy tomatoes, there has been no sign of life around the dumpster behind the cafeteria.
There was a local design and marketing outfit — they called themselves Graphic Pharts — who recently went out of business. I was walking past their old storefront yesterday when I noticed a box of bumper stickers in a nearby dumpster, along with other remnants of their short-lived operation. I assume they designed these for the presidential campaigns, in hope of landing a big contract. If so, I can see why they closed. Thought I’d share: