Updates!

All four snakes went to the vet last week, and all four got clean bills of health.  Both ball pythons weighed in around 250 grams, which was impressive considering their last weights were more like 200 grams.  Sarah-the-Sand-Boa weighed a whopping FIFTY grams, and Slither tilted the scale at a respectable 35 grams.

Not bad for any of them.  My current mission, as assigned by my exotics vet, is to bring in fecal samples from all four snakes.  Unless the sand boas are uncharacteristically cooperative it's more likely she'll just get two samples:  one each from Lucy and Scales.

For news of the shedding, both Sarah and Lucy shed a couple of weeks ago.  Scales and Slither are both mid-shed-cycle, with Slither once again being in the Longest. Shed. Cycle. EVER.  Scales is giving him a run for his money though.  We'll see which one manages to get over it first.  Meanwhile, both are acting like hormonal teens, i.e., moody and secretive.  Slither has completely buried himself in his substrate and Scales has his back to the opening of his hide on the rare occasion he'll even let himself be seen.  Fortunately they'll get over it when they're done with the sheds.

Unlike my teenager :P

Oh, and I have to admit that Sarah, aka HellSnake, has actually calmed way down!  She's much less thrashy (except around her shed cycle, and then who can blame her?) and is in general pretty pleasant to carry around and play with which is a far cry from her formerly nippy neonate self.  Today I took her up to the reptile shop to try and pick some new food for her since she's downing pinks like they're Jelly Bellys.  Seriously, she sucked down four this past Thursday (Slither wasn't hungry and Sarah is an accommodating garbage disposal) and was even looking for a fifth!  So it's definitely time to move her up a bit.  We're going to try her out on some f/t ASF fuzzies and see how she likes those.

As for Lucy?  She's lovely, and tonight when I took her out she just felt huge.  She's getting some heft on her, which is rather nice.  Just keep pounding those rodents, girl.

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Oh yes, rats!  I'm sure everyone will be thrilled to know that Oops survived his neuter and is healing nicely.  He's finished with his anti inflammatories and just has one more week of antibiotics.  Then next weekend he gets to move back in with the girls, none of whom managed to get pregnant during their mutual exposure.  Hooray!

Hopefully there will be much rejoicing. 

Happy Heart Day!

Sarah, who's freshly shed and fed in this picture, says Happy Valentine's Day :)

On the other end of the weird pet spectrum, Oops (our accidental male rat), goes in today to be fixed.  Bless his heart, he's a sweet boy.

(Poor baby -- we're not telling him today's Valentine's day, so shhhh!!!!)

Rats, in Both the Literal and Exclamatory Sense

We picked up The Sarah Rat's little friend last night.  More like little "friends" because my friendly local rat supplier (also my snake breeder) knows a softy when she sees one coming -- like recognizes like -- and a softy I am, be it for tiny cute scaly things or tiny cute fuzzy things.

Yes, it's a wonder I can feed tiny cute fuzzies to tiny cute scalies.  Lots of cognitive dissonance going on here.  Anyway...

So I'd emailed L and told her we'd be coming by to pick up a little friend for Sarah; she emailed me back saying she'd go through and find a nice, sweet female rat to be Sarah's cagemate.  When we came in to pick her up, there were three.

We took them all home.

Since there's been such a huge new pet invasion in our house, one purpose of adding one additional rat to our household (one!) was to give the Elder his very own tiny rodent.  He's not into the scalier residents of the house, but he does like the furry ones and has been fascinated with Sarah.  So he looked through the new rats and picked the largest of the group, a fawn-colored red-eyed dumbo rat with a white blaze down from the forehead to the nose.  Then he went back to work on collecting ALL the Pokemanz in the world (someone has to do it) and the Gum Zombie and I stared at our new babies.

As I watched all the rats interacting and adjusting to both Sarah (and Sarah to them) and to their new surroundings, I started to get worried.  Something was "off" about the Elder's rat.  I picked it up and flipped it over...

So now we have The Sarah Rat, Isobella, Nicole, and Oops.

I've got a call in to the vet to see if we can get Oops neutered.  Here's hoping the girls are too young to get knocked up.  Even I have my limits -- I do NOT need fifty rats.

Reptile Birthday Party

The Gum Zombie's birthday party was this past weekend, and everyone had a marvelous time!  The poor child was born exactly a week before Christmas (that was the one year I had all my shopping done before Thanksgiving), so we tend to do his bigger "friends" birthday party after everyone's back from the holidays.  And since there is massive reptile love going on with the child, well, what better to have at your party than numerous reptiles?

We saw a bearded dragon, two leopard geckos, a gargoyle gecko, two ball pythons (normal and albino) a baby hognose, a two-year-old male Dumeril's Boa (I covet that snake -- in my head I've named him Gilgamesh but I just don't have the housing for him at the moment), and then, this lovely girl:

Angelica is a red-tailed boa (BCI) and is decidedly not petite.  She weighs around 50 lbs and is quite the handful!

Now imagine the reaction I got to this picture on my Facebook page.  It was awesome.  Heh.

Otherwise, everyone is doing well.  Lucy and Scales are eating and growing, bless 'em, and Sarah and Slither continue to do the same. I also have the added burden of the mental gymnastics caused by having a pet rat.  Yes, what was once strictly food is now a welcome resident and is decidedly NOT food.  ARRRGHHH!!!

Adding insult to injury, we're picking up another one tonight because Sarah-the-Rat (the Gum Zombie loves her and we agreed we could have a warm-blooded Sarah in addition to a cold-blooded Sarah) needs company.  Apparently, rats are social creatures and require the company of at least one additional rat so they don't get terribly depressed.  Thus far Sarah seems fine by her lonesome, but she's a sweet little girl and I don't want to put her to the test.  So we're getting another too-young-to-be-pregnant (please God, no babies!) female rat to be her cagemate.

And that is IT.  I swear.

That is, until I get together the stuff I need for my Dumeril's enclosure...