On May 5th of this year my first bp and first snake, a nice little butter male, arrived. He's so friendly and easy to handle that I wanted another one and bought a champagne female a few weeks later. It's a good thing I got him first, because if she had been my first one there wouldn't have been a second one.

Their husbandry is identical, except that, being larger, she gets larger rats. Both snakes are in identical enclosures on the same thermostat, and they're quarantined in the bathroom away from the geckos and beardie. The temps are pretty good, a little cool (72-73) on the cool end, but then, I've been told young ones prefer things a bit cooler. When she arrived she was in a super tight ball, and when I take her out, if she's not balled up, she does mostly fake strikes at me and has bitten me and drawn blood. I was trying to weigh her, and had not been handling rats or anything that would smell like food when she nailed me good. I asked someone with more experience, and he said he's had people tell him that putting a t-shirt with the person's scent on it into the cage helped them. The t-shirt has been in her cage for several days. It's a good thing I have a large box of adhesive bandages. She's pretty and I don't want to give up on her. I've ordered a snake hook with some other items from Pangea and the box should be here on Monday. Last weekend she ate for the first time, and it was only when I put the f/t rat at the entrance to her hide and left it overnight. She won't leave her hide to grab it, and if she's out of a hide and I walk in, she goes back inside in a hurry. She reacts to every move I make. Ideas, please?

Also, when I hold her I've noticed that she feels much more leathery than the butter bp. Is this normal for champagnes?