Boa finds home at Aquarium

All that stood between Dr. Gregory Bossart and the Georgia Aquarium’s newest resident, a 6-foot emerald tree boa, was the rubber spatula the chief veterinary officer was using to take a look at the constrictor’s curved front chompers and mouth.

Still, Bossart was ice-cool, and the Corallus caninus didn’t seem fazed herself. Maybe the snake appreciated the vet’s use of the rubber kitchen tool, used to protect her super-sensitive teeth.”You have to have respect for these guys,” Bossart said Friday during an entry exam in which the vibrantly green boa with irregular white splotches also was weighed, measured and X-rayed. “If you hold them right, you don’t get bit.”

The world’s emerald tree boa population has been bit hard by mankind, via disappearing South American rainforest habitat and climate changes. That explains the aquarium making her its first snake resident.

In the Amazonian wild, these carnivorous animals feed on rodents, squirrels, monkeys, lizards, bats and sometimes birds. At the aquarium, mice will be the meal plan. Meaning the poison dart frogs, with which the boa will share a display, needn’t fret.

But nobody told the frogs that. As the curling constrictor was introduced onto a limb in the River Scout gallery exhibit, they vanished instantly into the greenery.