Pampered Little Snake, Give Me a Kiss - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Eaten?

As it turned out, the little snake would not eat frozen mice.

Song Keling used long tweezers to hold a thawed, pinky-sized mouse pup in front of the white snake’s snout, but the creature immediately backed away and turned its head.

She tried again; the snake turned away again.

Eventually, perhaps feeling annoyed, it slowly slithered away, turned its back on Song Keling, and buried its head into its coiled, slender body. Its thin tail was tucked in last, leaving the post-operative stitches near the tail clearly visible.

Song Keling: “…”

Better try live prey, then.

Because she didn’t know if the little white snake was venomous or not, Song Keling had to be careful when feeding the frozen mouse, never letting go of the long tweezers. But feeding a live mouse didn’t require that; she could just drop it directly into the “scumbag box.”

Song Keling picked up the pup by its tail and placed it in the opposite corner of the box.

Determining whether a snake is venomous or not actually has another method—one that isn’t 100% accurate but is very intuitive and effective: watching how it eats.

Generally speaking, the moment a non-venomous snake bites its prey, it will rapidly roll its body and wrap around it several times, using constricting force to kill the prey before swallowing it. This is their hunting method: constriction.

Venomous snakes are different. Since they can inject venom, they usually strike and bite the prey with lightning speed, inject toxins, release it, and wait nearby for the prey to die before slowly beginning their meal.

However, Song Keling soon realized that this observation was futile.

Qianqian remained in her previous posture, huddled in the farthest corner of the box. Two or three days had passed, and the post-operative wound seemed to be recovering well; even the white tip of her tail was beautifully coiled. She seemed to have OCD; her posture was perfect and seamless.

If Song Keling weren’t afraid the snake might starve to death, she would have found this scene quite peaceful. Unfortunately, there were no “ifs.”

Song Keling opened the lid and used the tweezers to move the pink, tender mouse pup toward the snake. The pup stumbled, climbed back up, and began sniffing around while moving toward the snake. Rodents didn’t seem to have an innate fear of their natural predators and were oblivious to the danger right in front of them.

But there was no danger.

The little snake flickered its thin black tongue and, after a moment, retreated slightly to get out of the pup’s range. Clearly, it wasn’t unaware of the added lifeform in the box.

Earlier, when Song Keling had been faced with those beautiful crimson vertical pupils, she knew well that the snake wasn’t “looking” at her, but was simply alertly facing the direction of the noise. Most snakes have poor eyesight; with few exceptions, they rely primarily on their tongues to gather information about their surroundings.

Now, Qianqian had captured the scent of food through her flicking tongue but did not hunt. That meant she didn’t want to eat.

That left only one final method.

Before resorting to assisted (force) feeding, Song Keling needed to know for certain whether Qianqian was venomous or not. Venomous snakes are further categorized into those that spit venom and those that don’t. During the surgery, she had been too focused and exhausted—and unsure if the snake would even survive—so she hadn’t performed any tests.

One can also distinguish venomous from non-venomous snakes by their teeth. Although some venomous species, like the Black Mamba, have fangs far shorter than the Sharp-nosed Pit Viper, venomous snakes possess either solenoglyphous (hinged) fangs or proteroglyphous/opisthoglyphous (fixed) fangs. Non-venomous snakes, however, have largely uniform, small teeth arranged neatly along the upper and lower jaws.

Song Keling reopened the box. The little mouse was scratching at the transparent wall, while the “easy-to-bully” little white snake, Qianqian, had already yielded her original spot to the “invader” and was quietly hiding in another corner.

Hearing the box open, she became alert again, raising her small head and looking over with her vertical pupils.

Song Keling first used a snake hook to lift the snake, testing her current temperament. Seeing that the snake didn’t coil back into an offensive strike pose, she put down the hook and grasped the snake firmly just below the head.

Grasping the tail is safer, but the tail was injured. Furthermore, holding the tail wouldn’t allow her to inspect the teeth or perform force-feeding.

This second time catching the snake felt completely different from when she was on the mountain or at the operating table. The snake’s body was icy cold, like a delicate jade bracelet carved with fine patterns. Since she was in the recovery phase, she felt healthy and strong, her body twisting uneasily in the air.

“Hah, you actually know how to get angry.” Song Keling couldn’t help but smile.

Qianqian was small, and her struggling strength wasn’t great. Under special circumstances, Song Keling could even handle adult Sharp-nosed Pit Vipers, let alone such a tiny juvenile. Her technique was very steady.

“You have such a good temper that even ‘food’ can step on your head, yet you get angry with me?” Song Keling said to the snake that was “looking” at her. “Do you know I’m your savior?”

“If you were to cultivate into a human, you’d be the kind of savior you’d have to marry to repay the debt, and yet you’re throwing a tantrum at me?”

“You little ingrate.”

Song Keling scolded her under her breath while using long tweezers to gently pry open the upper and lower jaws. The small teeth looked quite neat, but there were two that were slightly sharper.

Song Keling looked for a venom extraction tool. The simplest method was the “bite-membrane” technique, which worked every time.

However, when the funnel covered with nylon film was gently pressed against the snake’s snout, the snake turned her head away with zero desire to strike.

Song Keling: “…”

The snake’s head, having turned away, soon rested on top of the funnel. For some reason, those vivid red vertical pupils, though bright, looked somewhat aggrieved.

Song Keling knew it was a strange thing to see an emotion like “aggrieved” in the eyes of a snake. Yet, she found herself unable to force the issue a second time under that gaze.

“Alright, alright, if you don’t want to bite, forget it.” Song Keling put down the equipment and looked at the breathtakingly beautiful snake in her hand. She paused and couldn’t help but mock herself softly: “I feel like a mother with no bottom line, indulging a child. Luckily, I don’t plan on having children in the future.”

“But I really am doing this for your own good. You have to eat to have the strength to recover so I can release you back into the wild, do you understand?”

After finishing her earnest lecture, Song Keling put Qianqian back into the box, but she did not take out the thumb-sized mouse pup.

In the afternoon, Song Keling asked her Senior Sisters in the lab what might cause a juvenile snake to refuse food.

Qiao Ying was calculating and didn’t look up. “That albino King Snake you saved?”

Song Keling knew Qianqian wasn’t a King Snake and was likely a wild venomous snake, but she didn’t deny it. She remained non-committal: “She refuses to eat.”

“She’s probably unsettled by the unfamiliar environment.” Qiao Ying had never kept pet snakes; dealing with lethal vipers at school made non-venomous snakes feel a bit lackluster to her. But she had a general understanding, so she said: “Are you just keeping her in that plastic box? You could set up an environment, like moss, a hideout, that sort of thing. You can buy them at any reptile shop.”

Lu Yunli asked: “Is her injury healed? Any complications? How is the temperature and humidity control? She won’t get pneumonia, will she?”

Song Keling: “I checked. The wound is recovering normally.”

“Then try buying a hideout like Qiao Ying said. Maybe if she feels more secure, she’ll hunt.”

“Thank you, Seniors.”

After finishing her lab work, Song Keling went out. There were many types of hides: stones, logs, even skulls. Song Keling chose a beautiful, uniquely shaped stone hide, bought some moss for landscaping, a heating pad, and a medium-sized enclosure.

Upon returning to the dorm, she needed to move Qianqian to her new home. Otherwise, she couldn’t fit all these items in.

But just as Song Keling was about to move Qianqian, she suddenly discovered that the mouse pup in the box was gone.

Song Keling: “?”

Eaten?

Song Keling looked at the little snake. She was pure white, and although she was still huddled in the corner of the box, her posture was more relaxed than before. Her texture looked like high-grade white silk embroidered with green-gold thread—likely the contentment after a meal.

If she had just eaten, it wouldn’t be suitable to carry out a major “move.” It’s best not to disturb snakes for two or three days after feeding; if they get startled, they might regurgitate. Regurgitation is very harmful to a snake.

Song Keling looked at the pile of things she had spent quite a bit of money on and thought she had bought them for nothing. If everything went smoothly, Qianqian would be fully recovered in two or three days. At that point, she would be released back into the wild. She couldn’t be kept too long, or she would lose her ability to survive in nature.

These items were destined to be useless.

“You should drink some water, too.” Song Keling pulled a tiny pudding cup out of the pile. Aside from this, everything else was going into a cardboard box under the bed to gather dust!

The pudding cup could hold water. The mineral water bottle cap she used before was a temporary fix, but Qianqian hadn’t drunk any water yet. Could it be that the beautiful snake thought the bottle cap was ugly?

She poured fresh mineral water into the pudding cup and replaced the cap.

After doing this, Song Keling stopped hovering over her. She adjusted the lamp to a comfortable brightness and sat at her desk to read and review. She would look at the snake encyclopedia later. She wasn’t in a hurry to know Qianqian’s species anymore.

Once she recovered in a couple of days, she would release her. This was just a minor act of compassion.

Song Keling was very focused and didn’t notice that the white snake, who had always stayed against the inner wall of the box, had slowly slithered out for some reason and come to the outer corner of the box.

Perhaps the indoor lighting was suitable, the environment quiet, and the aura safe. At first, the snake only watched with curiosity the slender, beautiful hand that occasionally flipped the book pages. After a moment, she raised her thin body, used her core strength to bring her small head close to the lid of the box, and looked up slightly at Song Keling with crimson, translucent pupils that narrowed into amber lines.

When Song Keling finished her textbook and notes and turned to look at the box, she saw the little snake moving familiarly in the outer half of the enclosure, her body slithering gently, flicking her black tongue from time to time.

Song Keling was happy to have a beautiful snake to look at after her work and couldn’t help but smile. She put down her pen and tapped her index finger lightly on the transparent box.

The little snake, who was slowly patrolling her territory, noticed this and immediately froze, turning her head to look. Then, Song Keling saw her flickering her thin black tongue, approaching in an S-shape. Finally, her slightly rounded, shimmering forehead pressed gently against Song Keling’s fingertip through the plastic.

Song Keling froze instantly.

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