Snakes to get home in Texas zoo

Four venomous African snakes brought to the Little Rock Zoo after they were found in a box near a city intersection will be taken to a zoo in Texas later this week. The box was found Friday by a motorist, and zookeepers say they can`t keep the snakes because they don`t have the room or the antivenin for these particular reptiles. Randal Berry, the zoo`s reptile keeper, said he will drive the snakes to the Ellen Trout Zoo in Lufkin, Texas. The snakes apparently spent several days in a wooden box in a grassy area east of downtown. Paul Mitchell of Little Rock spotted the box and pulled his pickup over to inspect it. The box had the handwritten words "live venomous reptile" on it. Inside in separate bags were a 14-inch-long twig snake, a six-foot-long green mamba, a four-foot-long black mamba, and a five-foot-long forest cobra. Mitchell put the box in the bed of his pickup and drove the animals to the Little Rock Zoo. Berry previously worked for the Lufkin zoo, and knew it had similar snakes and their corresponding antivenin. No lifesaving antivenin exists in Arkansas to treat bites from such reptiles.