Christmas Snake

I gave Sam Indie, the adventurous anery kenyan sand boa today for Christmas and he absolutely loved it. And the best part is that my parents are actually fine with it. My brother-in-law, Spencer, might be a little upset by it because that was his favorite of the bunch. I'm sure he'll be fine.
They have to be the lowest maintenance pet ever, they don't smell, they can go months without food, they drink very little, and they have no hair to be allergic to. What's not to like?

The Perfect Pet

For Christmas each year, our family draws one name from a hat for secret santa. When I drew my 11 year old brother Sam this year, I immediately wanted to give him a snake. Sam would absolutely love a pet snake. However, due to my family's disposition towards snakes, this proved to be difficult.

My Mother is the person most scared of snakes that I know. In fact, our neighbor (5 houses down from us mind you) had a 6 ft. long Boa Constrictor, and she actually had nightmares that it would escape and she'd find it under her bedsheets.

So the question is, under these conditions, how would you go about getting Sam a pet snake for Christmas?

Destiny's Child

Great news everybody, Destiny's Child is eating like a champ. I was worried about him for awhile. After nearly freezing on his traumatizing trip from Vermont, he has been quite stand-off-ish. He was striking an awful lot at any movement, so I decided to give him a smaller cage, a dark hide box, and to put him up high where he wouldn't be disturbed. I think this has really helped him feel secure. After shedding, he ate two fuzzy rats this week with no problem. Huzzah!

What I wouldn't do to get my hands on...

a Mojave and a Lesser Ball Python. From what I've seen, these patterns are the most striking of all ball python patterns. I got this picture off of an Ad from VPI.See the top snake whose pattern fades rapidly down the sides? That is the Lesser. The Mojave is the bottom left snake. I love the dark dark browns and the key hole patterns on the side. There is also a slight fade that happens down the sides.
This other snake here on the right is actually a product of the two snakes- a blue-eyed luecistic. Isn't that interesting that two totally unrelated patterns would produce an all white snake with strange blue eyes?
I have a 5 year goal of producing a Mojave Lavender Albino. Would that be the sweetest thing? To my knowledge, I don't think any exist currently.

Eye Candy

I never really understood that phrase- "eye candy". But I'm sure it applies to these pictures of the totally bodacious new snakes we recently got. Thanks Steve for letting me take pictures of the adults.

1- Adult Pastel Male 1- Normal Female 1- 100% Het Lavender Albino - Destiny's Child. Mmm mm.

The Anorexic Anerythristic

Snakes are amazing little creatures. I wish I could go months without having to eat anything.

Indie, my little, once adventuresome, male Anerythristic Kenyan Sand Boa has not eaten since I brought him home over a month ago. If he were a full-sized adult, I wouldn't be so worried about it, but he is only six months old. My other 2 Kenyans are literally double the size of Indie, and they seem to eat whatever I put in front of them.

I have a theory as to why Indie refuses to eat. Indie is the leader of a tribe of sand boas that are under the rule of a tyrannical government- and until they leave his tribe alone, he has decided to fast. He calls it "passive resistance".
Because of this new behavior, I've decided to rename Indie- He will here-to-fore be name Ghandi.
(Actually, it was probably because the other two snakes were incorrectly sexed by their breeder and Ghandi has been living with two very large and scary females this whole time)

So now, we've given him his own small cage and we've tried feeding him everything. This includes both frozen and live small pinky mice, one chopped up small pinky, and 3 various sizes of crickets. All of these we attempted in different locations at different times of day. NOTHING seems apetizing to him.
On the bright side, Ghandi seems to be very active, and other than the fact that he is very small- he seems quite healthy.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I'm all ears. (I love how I say that as if my famous blog is being read by hundreds of snake enthusiasts each day)

This is the story of a, girl...

It was Friday afternoon and I had been anxiously awaiting the arrival of a pair of het lavender albino ball pythons from the good people at lavenderalbino.com. They were shipping them by Fedex as an overnight live animal delivery. The only thing was, the flight was delayed.
To make a long story short, Fedex didn't get these animals to me until Saturday afternoon and seeing as it was so cold outside, I was very worried for the safety of these small, valuable ball pythons.
When we opened the package, it may have well been a refrigerator in there. The 48 hour heat packs had completely chilled. We quickly cut open the sack for the small female het lav to find her motionless. It made me sick to see her neck kinked and her lifeless body floating in the warm water we had prepared.
It was a sad story all around. Fedex must have left the package in a cold warehouse or back of some truck overnight. The heat packs were meant to last 48 hours and they must have failed long before that. The well insulated package ended up acting as a cooler for the animals. It is sad to see any defenseless living creature dead and cold like that- and she was the most valuable one!

On the bright side, the more hefty het lav male survived the journey and he is in a toasty cage now and seems to be doing very well.
And I'd like to say how great Grant and his son are at Lavenderalbino.com. They had surprised me with another adult breeding pair of healthy ball pythons. One was a male pastel and the other, a big fat normal female. Both the adults survived the cold fine and they are now under the posession of my father-in-law Steve. We are excited to try and get a clutch out of them this year.

You down with OCD?

In mid August of this year, I was repulsed by snakes. By now, not 3 months later, I have made a snake breeding video, been to a snake show, visited hundreds of snake sites, seen hundreds of snake videos on youtube, purchased 2 mice and 4 different snakes, and by the end of this week, I will add 2 100% heterozygous lavender alibino ball pythons for breeding to my collection.
In the past, I have often wondered if I have obsessive compulsive tendencies. When I get interested in something, I kind of go crazy with it. A few of examples of this are:

Antique Toy Soldiers
Coin collecting
Original Nintendo games
X-men comics and action figures

Ask me anything you want about these areas and I will impart of my knowledge.
Could this strange behavior be identified as a mild case of OCD?

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a chronic anxiety disorder most commonly characterized by obsessive, distressing, intrusive thoughts and related compulsions. Compulsions are tasks or "rituals" which attempt to neutralize the obsessions. OCD is distinguished from other types of anxiety, including the routine tension and stress that appear throughout life. The phrase "obsessive-compulsive" has become part of the English lexicon, and is often used in an informal or caricatured manner to describe someone who is meticulous, perfectionistic, absorbed in a cause, or otherwise fixated on something or someone.^[1] Although these signs are often present in OCD, a person who exhibits them does not necessarily have OCD, and may instead have obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) or some other condition. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is very frustrating to the affected person and any friends and family.

Phew! I think the key words here are "distressing, intrusive thoughts". I wouldn't call my thoughts distressing or intrusive.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go check the mailbox for the 5th time today.

Striped Snow Kenyan Sand Boa

Part of my snake fascination is their genetics. We are in the golden age of snake breeding now and so many new color variations and genes are available- especially in ball pythons and corn snakes.

I want to make a shout out to Vincent at Natural Selection Reptiles. He is an "Evolutionary Biologist" at Yale University and he has a marvelous little section in his website about the genetics of snakes.
Through e-mails, he has helped me a lot with understanding the genetics of Kenyan Sand Boas. I found out that it is possible to have a Striped Snow- or in other words, a Kenyan that is striped (50% Rufescens phase- a co-dominant gene) and both albino and anerythristic. That is so cool to me. I even made up this little punnet square:
I found out from Vincent that i did it wrong because I treated the striped gene as if it was recessive. In reality, I believe 1/3 of the snakes would be normal pattern, 1/3 striped, and 1/3 granite.

Anyway, if anyone actually has a striped snow kenyan sand boa, I'd love to see it.

Blue Eyed Blonde

We've been getting a a lot of comments about the blue eyed blonde kingsnake which was spoken about in the last post and this is here to clear up any confusion for my extensive audience.

The good people at Split Rock Reptiles puts it this way:
An interesting phase of the ever popular California kingsnake. These animals in their homozygous state exhibit a rare form of hypomelanism. This reduction of melanin turns the chocolate ground color of these Coastal Phase Cal kings to lighter Blond color and also accentuates the lemon yellow banding. As these animals reach adulthood the iris surrounding the pupil of the eye also transforms in a nice shade of midnight blue. Quite a genetic makeover!
The following was written and collected by Vivid Reptiles:
So there you have it Catie- the blue eyed blonde you were so worried about.

My Pet Snake History

After making a video about ball python breeding, I became very interested in snakes. I have done a lot of research online and at the library about snakes. Partially, I was trying to decide which would be the best pet for me. Some of the considerations I had were:
price, size, maintenance, temperament, and rarity. But my main consideration was color and pattern.
I really liked ball pythons at first, but the morphs that I was interested in were so expensive. Then I found out that king and milk snakes are very cheap and there is a wide variety available. Blue-eyed blonde king snakes, arizona mountain king snakes, and pueblan milk snakes were all possiblities.
However, when I went to the Wasatch Reptile Show at the fair grounds, I found out how crazy these snakes can be. Not that they are bity, but they are hyperactive and fast making them hard to handle. I came across a male "Costa Rican milk snake" - (really a Stuarts phase Nelson milk snake) and after holding him, I realized that he was nearly as calm as a boa constrictor. This is quite rare in milk snakes. Anyway, I brought Milky home and he is a super good snake. He can be fed as often as I like, he eats everything, and he is super tame.
One snake that I came across at the same show was the Kenyan Sand Boa- one of the most beautiful snakes I've seen. I disregared them because I thought being from hot East Africa, they would require special mantenance.
When I looked at VPI's collection and did further research, I became very excited in this species. They have a wide range of climate (65-95 F), they are super hardy, they are very docile, and they come in several types. When I found out that even the most rare and highest quality morphs go for no more than $500 (versus baby ball python morphs going for over $10,000), I was sold.
By the way, Jessica's twin brother is named Indie and This big guy^ remains unnamed until a later date, due to a dead tie in the polls.
The public has spoken.

Pet Names

My wife is so funny whenever she names her pets.
It was her idea to name our rats Pickles and Neil Diamond.
She also had the idea to name a dog "Nipples" and then thought of different scenarios where that would be extra humorous- like, say, the mayor presenting Nipples with the key to the city for pulling a child out of a burning building.

Anyway, I wanted to post another naming competition for both the unnamed sand boas. You can take the polls on the side of this blog, or post your own.

Snake Obsession

After making a video for a snake breeder this summer, I became fascinated by these animals. I think I've gone a little crazy even. I made a video of snake highlights this weekend.- and yes, that is a mustache.