LUFKIN — Ellen Trout Zoo staffers were all smiles Tuesday morning as they welcomed the three-week-late arrival of three Louisiana pine snakes from their large eggs in the snake house, and watched a young buck who set rare and endangered hooves to earth Monday bond with his exotic mother.

The Louisiana pine snakes' parents, residents of Lufkin's zoo since 2002, laid the set of four 4-inch eggs on Jan. 6 — each weighing about 75-80 grams. Reptile caretaker Ben Roberts said he expected the baby snakes to emerge April 12. They didn't.

It was Monday before the first little "egg tooth" chipped its way through its shell. Its siblings were still in the early stage of emerging from their shell Tuesday when the foot-long firstborn curled around its former home, still inside a glass jar incubator. A fourth egg was undisturbed.

Indigenous to Louisiana and East Texas, the nonvenomous Louisiana pine snakes are one of the most endangered snake species in North America. And Ellen Trout Zoo was among the first zoos with a breeding program, its first hatch in 1984, followed by a second in 1987. Ellen Trout Zoo is one of 21 zoos to house the fewer than 100 Louisiana pine snakes in captivity — none of which belong to the distinct Texas population, said Charlotte Henley.

As for the young bontebok, which stood at 10:26 a.m. Monday — he immediately fell down, Henley said.

The 17-pound antelope passed his well-baby check-up Tuesday and was released into their grazing grounds where mom, or Sparky, immediately took charge, gently herding her curious young son away from the prying eyes and cameras. Penned up in a nearby area, the dad, Pauper, paced impatiently back and forth — ready to mate again after Sparky's eight and a half month long pregnancy, zoo keepers said.

He'll have to wait, though, because boy bontebok antelope are harder to place than girls — so his son will be around for a little while.

"At one time these were the most highly endangered species on the planet," veterinarian Michael Nance said. "In the 1970s they were just about gone."

The numbers of bontebok had dwindled to 17 worldwide, agreed Henley.

Ellen Trout Zoo is one of 20 or fewer zoos to offer respite to the grass-grazing bontebok of South Africa, and only 100 of them exist in the U.S., Henley said.