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.