Riverrun

[Gilligan]

She is beautiful. Thank you for sharing the photos. What morph is she?

[CloudtheBoa]

You're welcome, I love sharing my snakes.

She isn't a morph, she's a regular wild type.


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[CloudtheBoa]

River got her first large rat a few days ago, and weighed in at 1,001 grams. It won't be long before she's ready for jumbo rats.





These were taken with the door closed.





Then I opened the door to take better photos, and closed it as she was making it past the back legs.





Like a retic, she was hoping for more food the next day.

[CloudtheBoa]

River seems to have reached 6' now! She stretches along one short and one long side of her 4'x2' perfectly.

Here she is checking out her new hides. I came in earlier to see which hide she was using and all of a sudden I see her head whoosh out of her hot side hide to look at me. It was so ridiculous, I couldn't help but laugh.

[Gilligan]

She has such amazing color. And the whooshing movements - my retic does that too, and I've not noticed any other snakes move that way.

[CloudtheBoa]

River appears to have hit the 6' mark, she stretches along one short side and one long side of her 4'x2' perfectly.

Here are a few outdoor photos, these are a bit old (I get behind on updates on some websites, it can be a bit difficult to keep up with what I posted where). I was kinda worried about letting her on the ground by herself, since I'm in a new area I'm not sure how the neighbors would react if she got defensive again, but they tolerate the sight of the snakes overall it seems. She's so big now, I'll have part of her balled up in my hand, and her head's on the ground before I know it. haha I'm going to take baby steps getting her used to the outdoors, since she's had very little exposure to it in her life most likely. Always got my trusty snake hook to remind her that I'm there, too. Once she puts on a few more feet, I'll have to start having a buddy come outside with me, but I shouldn't need help actually lugging her out there for awhile yet.







Idk what she was doing here, but she looked silly. I opened the door, and she just kinda leaned her head backwards at me instead of turning her head.

The Canon is really hard to focus, and takes a long time to do it on the auto setting, so unfortunately her head came out blurry, but I took what I could so I could at least document her antics.

[CloudtheBoa]

Well River has eaten several rabbits now. Last I weighed her she was about 1,200 grams. Whoops, the rabbits are bit big for her. Still, she's growing rapidly and retics are one of the few snakes that I'm not too overly worried about giving bigger meals to. She recently shed, and looks a ton bigger...she doesn't sit still long enough for me to see how she measures up against her PVC cage. I'm thinking of plopping her in the 6' cage again and seeing if she's near 7' yet. If she is, I'll need to order a Herpstat 2, 4, or maybe even that new Herpstat 6 (you guys have no idea how tempted I am) so I can run the heat in her cage.

Here's some pics of her taking a rabbit. She's eating one of these every 2 weeks so Cloud can have the other large rats. I feel these rabbits are a bit too large to be giving him, since he's got a significantly slower metabolism than she does.







Her in blue.



And hanging out on her basking shelf. These things are so useful for convincing her to go back in her enclosure. lol Her head touches the shelf and she crawls right off, after trying to fight to the top of Bud's cage just a second ago.

[Megg]

She's gorgeous! Your photos are great, too- mine never turn out that good 😄

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[CloudtheBoa]

She's getting bigger by the day it seems! She has to be at least 7' by now...I need to weigh her and try to at least get a picture for SerpWidgets to get a guesstimate of her length. It's hard to get her to stretch out along the 6' cages, but she's definitely easily longer than they are. She appears able to double up along the length of her enclosure, with her tail touching her nose, but she hasn't perfectly lain up against it like that so she may actually be short of double the length of her 4'x2'.


Despite how big she looks next to her hides, she can still fit in them, but there's no more room left anymore. lol In another month or two, she won't fit at all.





She's also just as messy as ever. I scrubbed those hides clean last night, and she's already dirtied them again.





I just got more rabbits in, so she'll be put back on rabbits. I do have some jumbo rats as well, so I'll probably give one to her every other feeding until they're gone.


I'm hoping to get a Herpstat 6 by end of August or September, so I can move her into the 6' enclosure.

[CloudtheBoa]

Here are some old photos, before getting into the update.





River has been getting jumbo rats for awhile now, and has grown a bit in size so she got her first 1 lb rabbit about a week ago. At first she didn't seem all that interested in it (strange for her, she loves rabbits), and wouldn't strike at it. Eventually she pushed it up against the wall like "ugh ok I guess I'll eat it" and wrapped slowly around it once I started shaking it up and down. She had some troubles getting it down at first, so I thought it might be too big for her and tried to get her off it but she wouldn't let it go. Eventually she started swallowing it and got past the shoulders so I figured she could get it down and left her alone. It must have been a big meal, though, because she soaked in her water dish for the first couple of days. That's the only 1 lb rabbit I have, the rest are 2 lbs or 8-9 oz and below, so she'll be getting the smaller rabbits after that. I don't feel comfortable giving Cloud the 8-9 oz ones, so she can finish those ones off.









Her basking shelf was also getting kinda gross, and trying to wipe it with it inside the enclosure didn't seem to help so I removed it and gave it a good scrub and it seems to have gotten cleaned. Retic pee is some strong stuff. haha