"I see a dark sail..."

[Tulljunkie]

[title from the lyrics of the tune playing in the background right now]

So hello, everyone.

I've lurked - a lot - lately, but really haven't said hardly anything at all. There's so much info on here, I get side-tracked for an hour or so at a time without posting ever even crossing my mind.

My wife (Dawn14150 on here) bought me a 4-month-old normal BP for Christmas - "Karma". The short-lived running joke about the name being that when it - relieved itself? - on someone we could just shrug and say, "Hey - Karma, you know."

Butofcourse... I was lucky excrement-target number one.

Humor is SO in the eye of the beholder.

The BP's a normal, captive-bred and bought at a local pet-shop of high-repute. She's (I don't know the sex yet, but find myself continuing to default to "she") small for her age, it seems to me, though, at 16.5". She had a firmly-stuck shed that wrinkled her up a LOT until I finally got it to slough almost completely off after 3 days of high-tank humidity, daily soaks, and gentle rubdowns with a warm cloth. Just in time for her eyes to go grey-bluish in preparation for another shed.

I'd have much preferred to leave her be in the new tank to adjust, but she looked so awful and is just amazingly great about being handled, given her age and the condition she was in. So long as she seemed to be perfectly tolerating the handling, I took her out here and there to see what we could do to help her out. Now, she's already familiar with the family (our daughter seems to be the preferred warm-tree), and hopefully the upcoming shed'll be a good one. We're leaving her be in her hide with the humidity at about 85% until the shed's complete.

They had her feeding on F/T fuzzies, 1 or 2 a week. I think she could easily be on hoppers judging by her girth, so we'll be introducing them next week (temporarily off feeding at this stage of shed - she ate great for me in her feeding tub last week, if a little clumsily).

In the meantime, we have 3 fuzzies in the freezer for when she's ready for the meal she skipped today.

TheWife(tm)'s hobby (and one of her current college courses) is photography, so you'd think we have some nice pics to show at this point.


Not so. She made a little light-tent perfect for detailed close-up shooting, tested it with all kinds of stuff... It works great, producing photos of a high-enough quality for her to use in school abstract and concept submissions.

The problem, ironically, is that Karma is a very NON-timid, very curious and active little wiggler that won't sit still long enough for a good shot.

Without fail, we'll get her set in JUST the right position to show off her profile and colors, hit the shutter, and get a wonderfully-centered and framed picture of a fuzzy/blurred snake-head and flicking tongue. Seconds later, she's uncoiled and exploring the light-tent, unconcerned.

Ah, well. I can't say I don't love the way she's so passive that balling-up is something she very rarely does even momentarily.

I'd rather have a hundred lousy pictures of a pet that's secure, curious, and active than one perfect picture of one that's indifferent or insecure.

Eventually, we'll work it out with her. Him. Whatever (having the BP sexed is on the agenda - actually kind of dying to know). Until then, my avatar's among the very few half-way decent ones we have.

So anyway... *drums fingers* Now that I've rambled-on and everyone's good and ...

Love reading your stuff, guys. It's all really helpful and there are some good laughs here and there: nice niche community.

Looking forward to getting-to-know.

[reptile3]

welcome... I need a good camera to take great pictures like everyone else here has. My bp has pneumonia, and in a shed too... he has the bluish-gray eyes. I don't know what sex my bp is either, but I feel George is a he... If we find out later it's a she.. well we can name her Georgia. ha ha

[Tulljunkie]

Yeah, "Karma"'s more-or-less gender-neutral, so...

Oddly enough, so's the name TheWife threatened to label it before I decided on it, which was "Fran". Not even that I have a problem with the name itself, but for my BP? Nah, dontthinkso.

I'm terrible about naming things, though, so that was to give me a little kick in the butt to choose one. My iguana spent the majority of his life - 12 years or so - called "Frank" after the frilled-lizard in the "Rescuers Down Under" because I snoozed through the last time she used the tactic, not really taking it seriously.

Hey, sorry to hear about the pneumonia. Good luck with it, and thanks for the reply.

[frankykeno]

Welcome to BPNet! Sounds like lucky Karma found herself (or himself) a very snake friendly home.

I have ball pythons here that wouldn't know what a ball is if one rolled up and smacked em in the nose LOL. They must have missed the "ball up and protect your head" lesson at snake school or something because they've just never done it. I have others that are shy and view life basically by peeking out from a very tight coil.

You think ball pythons are hard to get a pic of, try a busy milksnake or a nosey boa constrictor. I've had more fuzzy, this is where the snake used to be, tip of the tail is all you see leaving the area type of pics than anyone will ever want to view LOL. One of our members, Deb, just mentioned in her picture thread that it took her multiple snakes and about 50 shots to get one decent shot to share.

Ahhh the joys of owning snakes.

[Tulljunkie]

Well, I'm finding myself easily obsessed; my Metzcal data logs are already enormous, considering it's barely been a week since we brought the BP home.

We've (TheWife and I) been poring through morph and breeding information all over the place in between different perspectives on husbandry, considering a few long-range projects that I'll likely begin laying groundwork for in the next month with a rack system built into (probably) our dining room.

I love this stuff, always have. When our extant reptiles all died-off - mostly gradually of natural causes, but the last few in a mass extintion because of a 2-week long ice-storm power-outage across the region in 2001 that I just couldn't compensate for - we chilled on the herp-thing in anticipation of having a second child.

Now that TheBoy's going to be 4 in a few weeks, I'm finally scratching the itch for caring for a diverse personal zoo again.

And though that power-outage was a fluke, considering we had ANOTHER such fluke with the October ice storm a little over a year ago, as soon as the weather breaks and I can take the power/heating systems offline long enough, a custom energy controller/management and backup-generator system is going in.

Fortunately, the house is huge. Lots of space for creative additions, like my 40-gallon aquarium built-into the wall under our staircase.

Also fortunately, TheWife is REALLY tolerant, sharing a lot of my interests if maybe not quite to the extremes.

So snake-friendly? Yeah, definitely. Pet-friendly, in general. About to begin working on a leopard gecko habitat even as I re-tool that aquarium and the cockatiel's setups, to pass the time until we cement at least some of our ideas for BP projects.

[Mindibun]

I love how you say "TheWife" and "TheBoy" -lol- It cracks me up. I'm glad to hear that your snake is doing well now. We've all done the whole stuck shed thing. It's not fun.

I just have to say, as an english major, that your posts look like a hyphen fairy went to town, just sprinkling-these- little-babies-all-over-the-place. -lol- Don't take it personal - grammar is just a pet peeve of mine. I want to be an editor when I graduate so I had to say something to ease my own conscience. -lol- Please forgive me.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing any pictures that you might put up! Good luck getting some. I know both of my girls are the wiggly sort too. I feel your pain. Also, I saw you have a female cockatiel. I have two males. They're my favorite type of bird - always so happy. ^_^ I'm sure my boys would love to meet your female. "Bom chicka wah wah" -lol-

[frankykeno]

Well not to be a total BP enabler or anything but here's a bunch of great links...

This one is a very straight forward and basic view on genetics but really a lovely site....

http://www.ballpython.ca/genetics.html

The best explanation of morphs by the people (Kevin & Kara) that breed some of the best out there (Kev's book is amazing so I've heard)....have a pencil and paper handy and have fun with the punnet squares!.....has the best glossary of terms online....

http://www.newenglandreptile.com/genetics_intro.html

Lists of morphs and when they were introduced and by whom....

http://www.grazianireptiles.com/mutations.htm

Something to drool over....

http://www.newenglandreptile.com/ball_gallery.html

And more stuff to drool over....

http://ballpython.com/page.php?topic=morph

And if you aren't dehydrated yet, more to drool over!.....

http://www.ralphdavisreptiles.com/ma...ven_traits.asp

[Tulljunkie]

Mindibun said:
---
I love how you say "TheWife" and "TheBoy" -lol- It cracks me up. I'm glad to hear that your snake is doing well now. We've all done the whole stuck shed thing. It's not fun.
---

Well, I went and peeked into the tank a little while ago and Karma'd left me a nice surprise: an almost perfect, full-body shed. A little tiny bit left on the tip of the tail, one stubborn patch accross the top of the head that she's working on, but otherwise... Wow. What a difference. I grabbed a few shots before she retreated into a hide; they'll be popped into the BP pictures area momentarily.





Mindibun also said:
---
I just have to say, as an english major, that your posts look like a hyphen fairy went to town, just sprinkling-these- little-babies-all-over-the-place. -lol- Don't take it personal - grammar is just a pet peeve of mine. I want to be an editor when I graduate so I had to say something to ease my own conscience. -lol- Please forgive me.
---

No harm, no foul. Actually, the usual critique I elicit is an overabundance of ellipses. The hyphen thing is pure laziness. When I'm in a rush, I tend crush multiple concepts together that way to describe compound ones rather than brainstorm for proper words and phrases. Can't talk with my hands via text, you see, so I improvise.



And, finally, Mindibun said:
---
Anyway, I look forward to seeing any pictures that you might put up! Good luck getting some. I know both of my girls are the wiggly sort too. I feel your pain. Also, I saw you have a female cockatiel. I have two males. They're my favorite type of bird - always so happy. ^_^ I'm sure my boys would love to meet your female. "Bom chicka wah wah" -lol-
---

Oh, she'd love the company right now. Of any male, seemingly, considering how friendly she's been lately with her perches, toys, water dish, etc. I raised her right out of the egg (one of many, but she's the only one I kept) and I've been thinking lately that she'd make a great breeding hen with the right male. Relatives and friends were such a pain last time, though. Everyone thinks they're (a) entitled and (b) capable.

I don't know about favorites, though. I think cockatiels are great, but I've had many a hand-tamed and talking parakeet and a black-masked lovebird that was the sweetest thing to me and an avian Cujo to everyone else. They all developed such unique personalities, it's actually pretty hard to say "I liked such-and-such best". I probably miss the lovebird (Opus) most of all, though, and that was YEARS ago.

[Tulljunkie]

Well not to be a total BP enabler or anything but here's a bunch of great links...

Oh, enable away. No harm ever came from reading, right?

I've seen a few of those, but the rest are already added into my favorites for digesting later tonight.

Thanks!