Lori Huff, age 10, of San Bernardino, California, for her question:

Are there really no snakes in Hawaii?

The snakes arrived on earth several million years ago and none of them could ever abide the cold. Wintry weather makes them slow and dull, and in temperate zones most of them hibernate through the coldest months of the year. The early snakes made them¬selves at home in vast areas of the world. But within the last million years or so, some of them got a horrible surprise. The cruel Ice Ages froze large areas of the world and buried them under massive glaciers. No snake in these territories survived the icy invasion.

Snakes do not migrate across sizeable expanses of water. When the Ice Ages re¬ceded, many displaced animals returned to reclaim their old territories. Several snakes reached England but none crossed the sea to Ireland. Until recently, no snakes reached the isolated Hawaiian Islands from the mainland. But a certain Indian snake arrived with a few relatives, maybe as stowaways on produce ships from the Orient. These fellows made themselves at home and multiplied in their new lands. And Hawaii is no longer snakeless.