Dia grinned widely, looking around for a serpent to study. Putting on her dragonhide gloves, she spotted a healthy-sized red tailed boa and quietly made her way over, offering her gloved hand to the beautiful serpent to signify that she was not food. She picked it up gently, first determining if the creature was too aggressive or not. As it was quite placid, she went on with her studies in silence.

The seventh year took a gentle (but firm) hold of the snake's head between her pointer finger and thumb, holding its jaw in place. She conjured a probing rod and probed the serpent, quickly writing down afterwords that it was male. She then vanished the probe and carefully took a firm grip on the snake's lower jaw with her right hand, as her left was preventing the snake from striking at all, and opened the snake's mouth. Yes, she already knew that red-tailed boas were boa constrictors, and therefore were not venomous, but she would never pass an opportunity to study the serpents further. After a moment of examining the constrictor's fangs, she let the snake close its mouth. "Sorry about that, mate," Dia said apologetically.

Measuring a live snake accurately with just a tape measure or such is practically impossible. She tried to straighten the creature as much as she could without hurting it and then proceeded to conjure a very long string, which she measured and then compared to the snake. Copying the results down on her parchment, she placed it next to her and wrote a few inches of parchment on the way it moved. Hopefully later, if there was any spare time, she could sketch it.

Grinning wider and making her way over to the mice, she picked three of them up and inspected them first before giving them to her snake to make sure none of them were diseased or anything. Dia set them down and let them scurry for a little bit, the snake curving back into strike position and tracking them before the rodents walked right into their doom. It had always fascinated her the way that serpents ate, particularly constrictors, as they struck and constricted their pray at a breathtaking speed. She noted this quickly on her paper, continuing to watch the serpent eat.