DRAPER, Utah — What began as a fun project for a Draper mom and her children has now outgrown itself and needs a new home, and it involves a snake named Rockwell.
Lots of people are afraid of snakes, but Rockwell has earned the love of the community as he's made up of rocks.
It began with just a few rocks for baby Rockwell, but now he's become a force to be reckoned with, as he's grown to 4000 rocks lovingly put in place by his fan base.
He's fittingly now residing near the Porter Rockwell Trail, and was hatched last summer by Kelsee Sellers.
“This one doesn't bite or anything,” she said. “It's been really fun to have here.”
Sellers says that when Rockwell reached 100 rocks, her children were "ecstatic," but little did they know that a steady diet of new rocks from the community would grow the snake exponentially.
Rockwell's rocks are an assortment of art created by people of all ages and abilities, and include phrases and quotes as well as designs.
"We'd come down and see okay, now we're at 400. Now we're at 500. And then once we hit 1000, we were just amazed that it had gotten that far. And then our 2000 and our 3000. And we're about 4000 now, too,” said Sellers.
But because Rockwell lives near abandoned train tracks, his current size is posing a potential safety hazard.
"Whether it's an active rail line, or an inactive rail line, we don't ever encourage anybody to be around either of those," said Carl Arky of the Utah Department of Transportation.
"We just don't want anybody to go on to the alignment and get themselves hurt and it can happen."
But UTA believes it has found a solution to keep Rockwell alive; the Utah Arts Alliance in downtown Salt Lake City has offered to transport his rocks there, where he can continue to grow.
Rockwell may be moved there as early as May 6.
And that makes seven year-old Liberty Sellers very happy.
"It's gonna have a forever home. We
don't have to worry about Rockwell anymore. He'll be okay."
