You never want to throw a birthday bash and have no one show up. Thankfully, that wasn't the case for Tiger-Lily as they celebrated a fourth solar return.
Found in Hurley, the two-headed western rat snake is now a resident at Shepherd of the Hills Conservation Center in Branson. I met them when they arrived back in 2017 while a reporter at the Branson Tri-Lakes News. You can read about that encounter here.
I couldn't let my first year as the News-Leader's outdoors reporter go by without attending Tiger-Lily's birthday, which featured snake tic-tac-toe, scavenger hunts, cupcakes and more.