The Zoo Story
"SNAKES CANgo a long time without eating," says Nets center Mikki Moore, the SteveIrwin of the NBA. "All I have to do is feed them some mice before Ileave." For Moore, that means about two rats before every road trip. Hisreptile collection includes a Columbian red-tailed boa constrictor (namedDollar Bill), an Albino Burmese Python (Peaches), two corn snakes (Outkast andnameless)--and the star of Moore's three-bedroom New Jersey town house, atwo-year-old spectacled caiman named Boscoe (above). "Everybody who comesover wants me to take him out of his tank so they can play with him," Mooresays.
Thefoot-and-a-half-long Boscoe, whose species is cousin to the crocodile, can alsostand some time alone--so long as he's left with about 100 nervous goldfish inhis tank. But additional animals are on the way: three more caimans, as well asa pit bull. (Moore also has a Yorkie.) Boscoe will grow to about 2 1/2 feet inhis six-foot-long tank but, says Moore, "as soon as he gets aggressiveenough to take off a finger, I'm shipping him to the Everglades."
The 7-foot Moore,in his second stint with the Nets, has maintained a brood of beasts--a piranhahere, a rottweiler there--throughout his nine-year, seven-team career (it allstarted with a garter-snake collection as a kid in South Carolina), and hisenthusiasm is contagious. Last season with the Sonics he invited teammateRobert Swift, who had a few snakes of his own, to his house. "I saw howinto them Mikki was, and that made me want more," says Swift. "I wentout and got eight pythons." Moore's menagerie is set for now, but he islooking for help in naming that six-foot-long corn snake (left). That's whereyou, gentle reader, come in.
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JESSE D. GARRABRANT/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES
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MICHAEL J. LEBRECHT II/DEUCE3 PHOTOGRAPHY
 DOLLARBILL 
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MICHAEL J. LEBRECHT II/DEUCE3 PHOTOGRAPHY
 NAMETHAT SNAKE!