[One for the weird file.] March 29, 2011 5:30 P.M. ET
Bronx Zoo’s Missing Cobra Found on Twitter By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries Wall Street Journal http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/03/29/evening-relaxation-missing-cobra-found-on-twitter/?mod=WSJBlog&mod= At about 2:30 Tuesday afternoon, the cobra missing from the Bronx Zoo was on top of the Empire State Building — at least according to the cobra’s Twitter feed. The tongue-in-cheek account, which is run by an as-yet-unnamed Twitter user, follows the cobra around the city, through exploits such as a trip to the snake exhibit at the Museum of Natural History (“This is gonna be hilarious!”) and Wall Street (“These guys make my skin crawl.”) The venomous Egyptian cobra escaped its enclosure Friday and was still at large on Wednesday. The Twitter account BronxZoosCobra sprang up on Monday with the message “I want to thank those animals from the movie ‘Madagascar.’ They were a real inspiration.” As of Tuesday afternoon, the cobra had more than 60,000 followers on Twitter. Twitter is full of accounts like BronxZoosCobra’s — run by people who take on a persona for comic effect. Your Digits blogger’s favorites include the Ferris Bueller feed, which retold the popular film through Twitter, and the BPGlobalPR account, which used humor to draw attention to the oil company’s efforts after the Gulf oil spill. BronxZoosCobra has a definite New York flair — as the cobra pointed out Monday, Big Apples and snakes “have gone together since the beginning.” It carried on conversations with the social-media folks at luxury icon Bergdorf Goodman and sampled cupcakes at the famed Magnolia Bakery. Its adventures were covered Tuesday by the New York Times City Room blog, and it exchanged tweets with Peter Alexander of NBC News. In an email to Digits, the cobra didn’t provide a name, explaining that no one ever bothered to provide one. “But they always name the cute baby pandas, don’t they? Simple reptile intolerance,” it said. It also said it has no plans to leave the city just yet but is “an adventurous snake.” “If Snooki can write a novel so can I,” it wrote. _______________________________________________ Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
