Where is Slinky?

You arrive home. It is 3:30. You must have beaten your sisters home. Your mom and dad don’t get home until 5:00 pm. You live in a ninety year old house in the middle of Neverland. It is a three bedroom house with two bathrooms. You have an in-ground swimming pool.

You go into the kitchen to make yourself a snack. You make yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and get a large glass of milk. The two pieces of bread have 75 Calories each slice. Two tablespoons of peanut butter has 140 Calories. Two tablespoons of grape jelly has 80 Calories. One glass of skim milk has 90 Calories. You are still hungry so you have an apple which has 55 Calories.

You wonder why you are so hungry since you just ate your afternoon snack two hours ago. Your snack was a chocolate bar which has 240 Calories. Then you remember why you are so hungry. You forgot to eat lunch because you where in a rehearsal for the school holiday concert. The average growing child needs about 1500 Calories per day.

As you are tidying up, you hear a scream. It is coming from the basement. It surprises you. You had thought that you were alone. Besides that, nobody goes into the basement because it is not heated.

You are scared! Out of the corner of your eye you see that your snake aquarium is empty. Slinky, your pet Boa Constrictor is not where he should be. He is supposed to be in his aquarium that is 1.5 m long, 60 cm wide and 1 m high.

The last time that Slinky escaped, your mom said that you would have to get rid of him. The cage, where you keep his food is still full of mice.

You have to feed Slinky three large mice every two weeks. He kills the mice by squeezing them to death. It takes him about 20 minutes to eat the mice. The last time you remember feeding him was about two weeks ago. You have been so busy with concert rehearsals that you forgot.

Slinky is tan in colour with dark crossbands. He is 2 m long, almost fully grown. He has heat-sensitive scales.

Boa Constrictors are loners and active at night, but you have been handling Slinky since he was small and he is not an aggressive snake. Slinky does not like water but likes to hide in small places to make him feel secure.

You remember that Slinky needs constant heat or he will die. That is why you keep his aquarium at a day time temperature of 29 C and a night time low of 24C. He also needs a warm spot to bask on.

The house is heated by radiators which are located in each room. Radiators work by giving off heat from the hot water that runs through them. This makes them VERY warm to touch but just right to sit in front of on a cold day.

All of a sudden a ball of fur whizzes by. It was your dog, Fluffy. You wonder where your cat Patches is because she usually greets you at the door. You think to yourself, “What am I going to do?”

Where is Slinky? Completed by Catherine Orr and Cory-Ann Spiers