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23

MANN: No.

HENSON: You didn't have any fears about having grown lions running around?

MANN: Actually we didn't have much in the way of animals. One day he came home and that evening we were playing bridge with a couple, and he suddenly began looking in all his pockets--first one, then the other, looking a little harassed. I said, "What are you looking for?" "Oh, nothing." he said. So after our guests had gone he said he had brought home a small pet snake, and it was not in his pockets any longer. [Laughter] Oh, it wasn't poisonous, you know. We did keep one snake for a friend for quite a while. It was a very beautiful corn snake named Elaine Cleopatra McGuiness, and Elaine Cleopatra McGuiness had to be fed white mice. Every once in a while Bill would bring home a white mouse--alive, of course. The cage would hold the snake, but the little mouse could sometimes escape before it got eaten. I'd see this little white mouse running around the kitchen and going under the refrigerator, and getting into the dust, and turning grayer and grayer, and finally I'd tell Bill he had to set a mousetrap to catch it, which he did, and of course, if it was killed the corn snake didn't want to eat it. But that's about the only time I had an experience with snakes. I think he tried having a turtle around the house, but that wasn't....So then we graduated to tropical fish. There was something I could really go for.