Feature Story Sample Journalism

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Ms. Gretchen Johnson, one of our biology teachers (room 206), has had one problem after another with her classroom pets, snakes. She has owned a boa, a blue racer, and a king snake, all purchased from the same dealer in Louisiana. A few days after she bought them and brought them to school, the blue racer escaped from her classroom through a ventilation duct, and made it to the library. Panic between students and librarians spread all across the library until biology teacher Ed Fluner caught the snake, but not before he got bitten in the process. Luckily for Fluner, the bite (on his hand) was not serious, and blue racers are non-poisonous. The next week, when Johnson arrived to school, she found the window in her class had been left open. With temperatures dropping to 15 degrees in the room, the blue racer and king snake were stiff from the cold. She then, in an attempt to save her pets, put them under a warming light and asked a student to watch them. The student unfortunately did not do his job, and upon returning Johnson discovered the king snake had eaten the blue race and within a week the king snake died. Her boa, Cleo was also referred to as 'he', 'she', 'it', or that 'darn snake' because there was no way to tell if Cleo was male or female. "Actually, there is no easy way of telling the difference between a male and female boa constrictor" said Johnson when asked about the snake's many aliases. For the first several months of Cleo's companionship, it refused to eat. Attempts to force feed him eggs, and ground meats were not successful. Neither were B-12 injections, which were supposed to stimulate its appetite. This past summer, Ms. Johnson was in Portland, Oregon studying at Reed College and couldn't take Cleo with her. A sophomore student, Malcolm Robertson, volunteered to take Cleo home with him for the summer. "Cleo was the center of gossip
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