Middle Gate Elementary School students were treated to a visit by crew and animals from Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo, Wednesday, June 10, as a thank you to the school’s student body.

As part of the school’s Middle Gate Loves To Read Week, which ran April 6 to 10, the students participated in a coin drive that raised $747.06, all of which went to fund the Beardsley Zoo’s rehabilitating and sheltering of an injured bald eagle named Kodiak.

 As a special thanks, Beardsley Zoo Education Curator Jim Knox and educator Jackie Westlein brought animals for the students to meet, including a hawk and a snake.

After Middle Gate reading specialist Lina Silveira presented Mr Knox and Ms Westlein with a check on behalf of the students, Ms Westlein went backstage to retrieve a broad winged hawk named Peeper, who had lost a wing in the wild and was nurtured back to health at the zoo, which is based in Bridgeport.

 As the next animal was presented, students and teachers gasped as Ms Westlein brought out at a 6-foot-long, 18-pound boa constrictor named Lester.

The Beardsley Zoo educators said they needed help wrangling the beastly reptile, and Middle Gate Principal Christopher Geissler stepped up to assist in holding the snake.

Mr Geissler playfully relayed back to his students and faculty that the snake felt “leathery and solid.”

Middle Gate Loves To Read Week consisted of a variety of literature-related events, including the schoolwide reading of Pennies for Elephants by Lita Judge, who also visited the school in May. The book helped inspire the coin collection at the school, as the book tells the story of children who raise money to buy circus elephants who are set to retire from the circus.

Mr Knox and Ms Westlein also brought out a mock-snakeskin of an anaconda, that spanned 37 and a half feet in length. They allowed student volunteers to stand at different lengths along the snakeskin to mark the sizes of different snake species, ranging from the king cobra to the Burmese python.