Hello!
I wanted to introduce myself here. As a child I was a bit fascinated by snakes and most wildlife. Before I could read, I could apparently tell the difference between venomous and non-venemous snakes at the National Zoo (or so I was told by my family). I do remember going to the reptile portion of the National Zoo regularly. We had a science teacher that brought his large boa (or was it a Burmese python) to school and I still remember that even though it was over 25 years ago. He fed it live rabbits which he bred himself in his bathroom tub. I remember that as well. Why not rats? He said bunny rabbits have no means of attack (as an adult, I know that’s debatable).
Anyway a few years ago I said “I’m an adult. I have money. I live in my own apartment. Let me think about getting a snake so I kind of honed in on ball pythons.” I was a bit worried about the care requirements from my initial research so opted not to get one. Fast forward to a few months ago. My partner (after 4 years you don’t say girlfriend) has a nephew into reptiles and other critters. He was off to vacation and camp and the designated petsitter would not care for their 4-6 month old male pastel ball python. So I was happy to pet sit. Read forums / care sheets voraciously. Did dozens of hours of research. Was told he hadn’t eaten in a while so I should feed live in a separate dark box. Go to the Petco and get a mouse. I can tell this snake is going to kill that thing by putting the box the mouse is in on top of the enclosure. Move the snake to it’s feeding dark box and the mouse bites me, drawing blood. Almost got away. I concussed it, threw it in, but the snake wouldn’t eat so I closed the box, stepped away, heard some noise and it was feeding. After the bite I went and got frozen/thawed mice and using the hair dryer trick (they said he was a picky eater), by the end of the 4 weeks, he was eating out of my hand, err tongs.
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/AccurateZe...restricted.gif
Here’s a few photos of the guy:
https://imgur.com/a/DxDUVEf
Seeing how fun and relatively easy it was to care for the snake once everything is set up properly and that it wouldn’t cramp my aging lifestyle, I looked into getting a ball python of my own. Word got around and a coworker said he had hog island boas and his female MAY be pregnant and his regular BCI may also be pregnant by the same hog island male (they all cohabitate). So I did my research on those and seemed a little bit more exciting (albeit admittedly less beautiful that a design morph ball python) than the lazy ball python. When he told me his gave birth, I figured I’d check them out and if I liked the size of the parents (size was a concern going in especially after seeing a 30 lb Dumervil at the Central Park Zoo which supposedly is a “good pet”). And after meeting the Hypo-hog mother and pure Hog Island father and their size and temperament I picked 1 of the 5 babies that were left (1 died at child birth; 1 escaped!). I was leaning towards the male but was drawn to 2 of the very lightly colored and almost salmon - tail colored females.
She’s less than a month old but nearly 2 feet long – born July 24, 2018.
https://imgur.com/a/Dw9hYm9
I look forward to being a member of this community and learning more!
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