A warm reception for a cold-blooded creature

We have an official state game bird: the wild turkey. And the official state cat: a tabby. But official state reptile? That one still isn't taken.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives designated the garter snakes the Commonwealth's cold-blooded animal of choice. There were no other competitors in a sparsely attended informal session.

``Snakes are cool," said Darryl Sampson Jr., one of two 11-year-olds from Kingston who helped suggest the bill. ``In places like Boston they eat rats, and in Kingston they eat toads."

Sampson and Sam Ballerini were third-graders at Kingston Elementary School when they visited the office of Representative Thomas J. O'Brien three years ago and asked about the state reptile. When they heard there wasn't one, the boys suggested garter snakes, one of the nation's most common reptiles.

The bill was filed in December 2004, said Rebecca Tremble, a spokeswoman for O'Brien. It would need to be approved by the Senate and signed by Governor Mitt Romney to become law.

A spokeswoman for Senator Therese Murray, a Plymouth Democrat who cosponsored the measure, said the bill could be taken up soon.

``The selling point for the legislation was the garter snake is the only reptile found naturally in all the cities and towns in the Commonwealth," Tremble said. ``It is a very useful reptile."