After this snake arrived I had to take away his pvc scaffold while I acquired some endcaps. I did not want him trying to squeeze inside the pipes. He ended up outside of the bin, and I learned two things:
- This snake sticks to and hates my palms as much as my ball python
- He's very fast when motivated
I had trouble picking him up as he took off every time I touched him. I put on some gloves and he calmed down enough to be picked up (snakes really don't like my palms), but I failed to put him in the enclosure and he ended up loose again. I eventually put a hide on a short box in front of him, and moved the whole unit to the enclosure after he hid. It's unfortunate that he had to start with the stress of being chased around the room.
I also blacked out the enclosure sides and gave him a smaller water dish when I put the pvc pipes back in. He was a little disturbed and spent some time looking for a way out of the box. He seemed calmer today. He spent most of the day in his hide and is now sitting on the pipes. I noticed he was sticking partially out of his hide yesterday even though it's the same size as those preferred by my much thicker ball python, but today he seemed to fit.
Ambient temp is 80 and surface temp under one of the hides is 88. He has spent most of his time in the heated hide so far, and I have not observed him use the cool hide. Based on a source I don't completely trust, I'm thinking I should increase the day temp to 83 and let night temp drop to 75. In theory I think I should also increase the UTH daytime temp, but I'm wary of making it unsafe and I don't want to disturb him by constantly taking readings with a temp gun.
I look forward to moving him to a larger enclosure post-quarantine. I considered naming him Idris, but went with Nim because he's fast and I don't think he supports dependent typing.
Coming out of bag:
Poor snake losing his mind outside the enclosure:
Sitting on pvc tonight:
The whole setup now:
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