Antoinette Uryniak, age 10, of Utica, New Yorks for her question:

Is it true there are no snakes in Ireland?

Your old Andy claims to be an Irish pixie. He says that he lived there for long ages of time and never saw a single snaky in Ireland. And neither did anyone elsei Whatts more, every proper Irishman will tell you why there are no snakes in Ireland. Ha claims there once were snakes there but his beloved St. Patrick drove them all away.

This, however, is a fanciful story. And fanciful storios lake this and the one about Andy being a 5,000 year old pixie are vary fine. We like to smile and go along with them as long as possible. However, the experts who have studied the matter seriously disagree with the first part of the Irish snake story. They claim,, and say they can prove that there never ware any snakes in Ireland. WhatIs more, they say they can tell you why there never warn any snakes in Ireland.

These experts tell us that the reason goes back to the last Ice Age, perhaps 10,000 years ago. At that time Northern Europe was buried beneath massive glaciers. What is now Ireland, together with most of England was buried under a solid mass of ice. Post of the animals went south to warmer weather. The rest wore crushed and frozen with the plant life. Snakes cannot abide cold weather and nowhere did they survive the glaciers. There are still no snakes in Alaska, our newest state and the only one without snakes.

This Ice Age began at last to wane. The .fringes of the glaciers melted and dry land appeared. But, because so much of the earth's water was still frozen, the seas were lower. What is now Ireland and England was joined to the land mass of Europe. The English Channel was a swampy river valley.

Animals walked north as the glaciers retreated. Foxes and rabbits came back. One lizard and two smell amphibians got as far as the land which was to be Ireland. But no snake was able to do so, for the melting waters cut off Ireland first, when the land was still chill and frozen. Then, though there were 32 different kinds of snakes in Europe, only three of them managed to get to England before the Channel deepened end England, too, was cut off.

Though snakes could live in the gentle climate of Ireland today, none could cross the waters to get to the Emerald Isle. There are, of course, sea snakes who live in the oceans. But land snakes cannot cross the sea, As a family they have existed only about 60 million years. And recently formed islands are often snake less. No snakes hp.ve reached to the volcanic islands of Hawaii. However, one small stowaway snake hitched a ride on some cargo ship and now lives there.

Apart from a few islands, snakes are found throughout the temperate and tropical regions of the earth, They do not live in polar regions or any place where the ground is frozen most of the year. And the last lee Age drove the snakes from Ireland ifs indeed, there were any snsk es there at all.