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...

Settling In

The snakes are settling in, and I'm settling in to being the keeper of four snakes.  I've had to bump up our central heat to get their ambient temps where I'd like them with this cold snap we've got going on, and my next mission is to figure out how to raise their ambient temps without jacking my power bill up sky-high.

Regarding the stressed-out relatives and random community members, I've decided this is just not something I'm going to worry about.  People are going to feel the way they're going to feel, and it's nothing personal.  We're not being persecuted for owning snakes; all is well.  I'm going to instead concentrate on why I threw myself into this so wholeheartedly:  my son.  When I first started researching snakes and snake ownership I came across You Tube channels like Steven Tillis's Rep Tillis Herps and Brian Gundy's For Goodness Snakes.  What I came away with, and what I choose to focus on, is that snake keeping is a great interest to facilitate in a child.  It fosters responsibility, knowledge about animal husbandry, increases awareness of genetics... I really don't see a thing wrong with it.  And I'll approach it like that with others.

I fully respect people's concerns and fears and have zero intention of "pushing" snakes on anyone, and would never think it was funny or cool to startle someone with one of our animals.  But that said, I'm also not going to run my household in fear of what others may say.  My home was already essentially a zoo.  The snakes merely brought the animal count to double that of the humans.  The only folks I ask to live with it aren't complaining.

Well, in the case of the teenager he's made a few comments, but he also admits he can be bought.  So I'm not too worried about him.  Heh.

Oh, and from my husband the other day, "So where do you plan to put your big snake?"  I thought he meant Lucy at first (as opposed to Sarah), and I said she was either moving into GZ's room after quarantine ends or is staying in our room.  He clarified he meant my eventual boa constrictor, so it looks like that's a go if I decide to go that route someday.  Yay!  But I did tell him that isn't something I'm looking at moving toward in the near future at all.  We have all the snakes we need for the moment, and I need to concentrate on getting Scales and Lucy through quarantine and fully established.  Also, although I keep looking for a boa that won't get over six feet, what I'm finding is that most seem to top out between 8 and 13 feet.  Right now, I think that's a bit too much snake for me.

Knowing my limits = a good thing :)

Disquieting

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Not that anyone's reading this particular blog (except my husband, who's contractually obligated)  Oh well, this would be why I split it off from my other blog.  Most people, I'm learning, either aren't enthralled with reptiles or are actively repulsed by them.  I guess I've been pretty sheltered because although I knew there were folks who didn't like snakes or were scared of them, I never understood just how intense those feelings were.  My brother and sister-in-law came in our house yesterday to pick up their six-year-old (we were babysitting him for a couple of hours) and it was clear they're uneasy about the idea of snakes.  They're okay-ish with the sand boas, due to their small size, but the sand boas are babies and the ball pythons... well, they don't know they're incoming.

My brother said if we got snakes that were going to reach three or four feet in length he'd never come over again.  I didn't have the heart to tell him that we've kind of already passed that threshold, and I don't know how to handle this, really, other than to reiterate that the snakes are well-secured in their vivariums and to make certain he knows we're not going to be hauling the snakes out at random family gatherings.  Or at any family gatherings at all, for that matter.  Forced exposure is never a good thing -- for other people, or for the snakes.

So my hope is that the whole "out of sight, out of mind" theory will work, because the snakes are coming.  We're adjusting the thermostat levels as I type.  Scales and Lucy will be here tomorrow, just in time for holiday insanity.

I mean, I understand misconceptions -- I've had some myself.  One reason I initially wrote off ball pythons as an option was because I thought if they escaped they could prove to be a danger to our other animals; that's simply not the case.  Ball pythons are the pinheads of the boid world.  Seriously, Google images of "ball python" and look at their heads.  They're itty bitty, especially compared to the rest of the snake's body size!  The dog and the cats are too big to ever be considered reasonable prey for a ball python, and BPs are such retiring animals that their instinct upon finding themselves free of the vivarium and out in the big, bad world would be to find the nearest dark, safe place and hide.  They wouldn't be hunting; they'd be looking for security.  They're reptiles.  Instinct drives them.

Unfortunately, the same human tendency to anthropomorphize our furry pets can also lead to an innate distrust of reptiles.  A dog or cat's body language is part of common lore, and easily understood.  Wagging tails, purrs, open canine mouths, feline head rubbing... all these things are comprehended and seen as signs of happiness and contentment.  Snakes, though, can't smile.  They don't even want to smile.  And a "tail wag" from a snake is a warning sign.  They're the antithesis of everything we've been taught to want in a pet.  Snakes are not warm, fuzzy, or loving.  They don't get excited to see us.  They don't purr with contentment in our arms.

In fact, the only positive a snake experiences when being removed from its enclosure is a warm perch on its keeper.

And even so, some people choose to have them in their homes.  I choose to have them in my home.  My child's happiness is everything to me, and just seeing the look of happiness when he's holding Slither tells me I've made the right choice.  I hope that my family will understand that we're not going to make them "bond" with the snakes or anything ridiculous like that, but in the case of some relatives I'm just not holding my breath.

Why? For the Love of God Amanda, Why Snakes?

Good question :)  TL;DR version located below at the quadruple asterisk mark.  For the full version, read on.

Like most of us, I didn't grow up keeping reptiles.  I did, however, grow up being fascinated by them.  My grandmother completely aided and abetted me in this.  She actually loved lizards most, and in fact built up an entire outside world on her patio called "Lizardsville" which was populated by little rubber lizards, spiders, frogs, and (you guessed it) snakes.

As I grew older I came to understand that Lizardsville didn't exist while we were gone, but was instead carefully reconstructed each time we came to visit my grandmother.  It didn't take away the magic of her creation.  The woman crocheted a spider web for Lizardsville's resident rubber arachnid for Pete's sake.  I mean, talk about dedication.

But my grandmother wasn't only a fan of rubber reptiles and frogs; she loved the real thing.  Snakes also fascinated her, although only the smaller ones, and I believe she took more of a guilty pleasure in them than anything.  She hated how they ate (one poor blacksnake lost its life at the hands of her mother due to it having the bad taste to dine upon a giant toad they'd befriended), but even so she thought they were just the most interesting and compelling animals.  I remember several occasions when she'd quietly summon me, "Amanda, come here!  Shhhh!!!" and she'd show me a garter snake lazing in the hibiscus bush.  She'd point out how it balanced itself, how it used its body to hold on to the branches, and how its little tongue would flick out to see what we were.

As a small child, it was simply amazing to me.

We were never without some sort of household animal at any time throughout my growing-up years:  a dog, a fish tank full of black mollies and guppies, numerous hamsters, another dog, more hamsters.  There were no cats, because my father was allergic.  No birds, because they were messy and loud (although we did babysit a parakeet for some friends of the family when they'd go on vacation).  No snakes, because my mother had pet mice and rats as a child and the mere thought of feeding one to a snake filled her with horror.*

And you know, that was okay.  I don't feel like I suffered as a child because I couldn't have a snake.  I went on to grow up just fine with the fish and otherwise strictly fuzzy pets.

Any time I had a chance to touch or hold a snake, though, I would.

Flash forward about thirty years or so, and I'd managed to produce my own children (and also to populate my house with a dog and three -- yes three -- cats).  My older son was happy with this arrangement.  My younger son, known in the blog world as The Gum Zombie, was not.  About six months ago, he started lobbying for a snake.

Blink.

"Why?"

"Because they're cool, and I like them."

Hmmmph.  "I don't think we need a snake, sweetie.  Snakes are happier outside."

"Actually, if they're bred in captivity they don't know what outside is.**  So really, we'd be doing the snake a favor.  I can give it a good home!  I can be a good snake daddy!"  And then the lip trembling commenced.

Ouch.

Still, I wasn't sold.  I mean, if I gave in every time that child's lip trembled I'd have an entire house full of Legos, herps, stuffed animals, and... oh never mind.  The point is, I didn't just cave immediately.  Then a local business associate came into the office and was chatting with everyone (folks here have known this guy over 40 years) when he mentioned he was trying to find a home for some snakes.  It seems his college-aged daughter's corn snakes had managed to produce at least two generations of offspring and he and his wife were starting to think that perhaps 30+ snakes were a bit much to continue to house.  Believe me, this man was selling the idea of taking home a snake, but I resisted.

That said, he also made an impression.

Add to him my co-worker who owns a ball python and a red-tailed boa, and who also started casually mentioning how great his snakes were, how much his kids loved them, all that stuff.  Oh, and his snakes didn't eat live, perish the thought!  They ate frozen/ thawed mice.  It was safer overall, and he wouldn't have a snake that insisted on eating live.

Hmmm.

Bear in mind, I'd told none of these people about the Gum Zombie's newest preoccupation.  It was just that the world had decided to inundate me with snakes.  Fine.  Fine!!  So when that same co-worker sent me an email alerting me to a big reptile show down here, I started researching snakes as pets in earnest.  Not because we were absolutely going to get one, oh dear no (oh dear yes, because my fascination had been well and truly piqued again), but because I needed to at least be fair to the child and consider his current passion.

So off we went to visit all the scaly creatures, and what an experience it was.  Now before we went I'd pretty much decided on a king snake of some sort.  From what I'd read they were voracious eaters, had zero problems converting to frozen/ thawed food, and their housing requirements weren't too stressful (room temperature, no problem!), so to me they seemed ideal outside of a nasty little escape artist tendency.  But on the plus side they'd be too small to eat the cats even if they did get out so I figured we were set.

In we walked, and the first table we hit was the sand boa table.  The boy was hooked.  I didn't even have time to guide him to my snake of choice; he wanted a little anery sand boa.  When the lady at the table first put The Snake That Would Be Slither into his hand he jumped and it's only because I was on point that I managed to scoop the little creature out of his hands and hold it in mine. Needless to say, we came home with him, and once the Gum Zombie got over his jumpiness (which took all of 30 seconds), he totally hogged that little snake.  So when we went back the next day, ostensibly to see all of the exhibits we missed on our first visit due to someone's desire to get home with his precious cargo (and with my husband's blessing saying "Knock yourself out, baby -- but no birds")*, I ended up with Sarah.

For the record, sand boas are totally a "gateway snake". Shortly after we had them established, we started wanting something with a little more heft to it.  My initial plan was to hold off for at least a year.  Obviously that didn't work out so well; witness the soon-to-be entrance of Scales and Lucy.

I think I'm going to have to wait a little on that Dumeril's boa I want, if only for my husband's sake...

Because some folks have asked me, a large part of the appeal lies in the fact that snakes are very basic animals.  They want nothing from you, literally, other than food and somewhere warm to hang out.  That warm place can be their habitat, or around your arm, but they couldn't possibly care less which it is.

They're not needy.  They won't sit at your feet and meow at you imperiously when they've got a clean litter box, fresh food and water, and have already been petted for 15 minutes straight causing a sneezing fit of epic proportions (guess who inherited her father's cat allergy?).  They won't bark at you incessantly because a squirrel has invaded the back yard and they must go guard the trees at all costs.  They don't ask you for more Legos (or Pokemon cards -- gah!!!!).  They just... are.  There's no hidden meaning to a snake's actions.  If they bite you it's either a feeding response (hungry snake!  careless keeper!) or they're defending themselves (threatened snake!  careless keeper!).  It's nothing personal, they're just snakes.

Simple is good.  And snakes, for me, are fantastic.

*I can't say I blame her -- we feed the Kenyan sand boas frozen/ thawed mice, and my intent is to do the same with the ball pythons.  Tiny poo-filled chickens are awesome (okay, and disgusting, but still).  The only potential issue is that ball pythons can be picky eaters and transitioning them from live to frozen/ thawed could be... erm... problematic.  Sigh.  But overall it's considered safer to feed frozen/ thawed (or freshly humanely euthanized) because a dead meal doesn't bite back, so we're going to do our best.  Do! Not! Want! To! Feed! Live!!!!

**This is a child who does his homework and will research things in the library so he has his point-by-point refutations ready.  He's nine.  Yes, I'm scared too. 

***The bird prohibition was for the same reason as my parents:  too loud and messy.  Fortunately I agree with all of them.  Even I have my limits (I'm sure Brent will be grateful to note that!).

****And now, at last, the TL;DR Version: 
I think snakes are cool. My younger son thinks snakes are cool.  This gave me an excuse to get a snake.  Or four.  Maybe five someday.  So I did :P

Where Are We Going and Why Are We in This Handbasket?

I have a regular blog (It's All About the Walls) where I babble on endlessly about my kids, my weight, what I'm eating/ not eating, bellydance... you name it, it's fair game for the blog.

However.

Most of my usual readers (all six of them) aren't too much into the slithery things that have recently entered my life, to wit:

these scaly little beasties.  Say hi to Slither and Sarah.  They're baby Kenyan Sand boas, and are 5 and 4 months old respectively.  Slither, a male, will reach 2 feet max as an adult.  Females on the other hand, like Sarah, can grow up to 3 feet in length and have significantly more "heft" (girth) for purposes of reproduction.

Anyway, two relatively small, colorful* snakes.  Shouldn't be too much for people, right?  Well, that may be the case (and I don't want to sell my readers short), but we're taking things a bit further now.

Also entering the picture would be Scales

and Lucy,

both of whom are baby ball pythons and will be coming home to join us the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  Can we say snakefest, boys and girls?  I thought we could!

So. I figured my regular readers (bless them) would appreciate not being assaulted by pictures of my snakes every time the little critters manage to twist themselves into a pretty pattern or something; hence the new blog.  Also, I kind of have a feeling that reading my description of their eating habits might be a bit disquieting for those who didn't sign on to hear me refer to mousicles (which are the pre-killed frozen rodents currently occupying the bottom bin in my garage freezer); or for that matter, people who could have happily lived their entire lives without ever knowing what a mousicle is.

Oh well.

Hang on, kids.  It's gonna be a heck of a ride.

* Color-wise, Slither is an anery which means he lacks the orange/ red pigment erythrin.  Sarah's coloration is normal, but she's a Dodoma cross which means half of her genetics come from a snake with a bloodline from the Dodoma valley of Tanzania.  Sand boas from that region tend to have almost patternless heads, more crisp patterns, and develop less "speckling" as they age, so we'll see how she develops.