This is my first post here. About 2 weeks ago my kids and i went to the pet store to get our rattlesnake a mouse. While we were there we were looking at all the animals and ended up leaving with a mouse and a 4 month old spider ball python. This snake is awesome. So far we have a 10 gallon tank for now and a 40 gallon for later on. We bought an under the tank heater and a heat lamp that we will be switching out for a ceramic next payday. We dont know the sex yet but plan on taking it to a vet to get sexed. It is a very calm snake and the kids enjoy it. It started to show the telltale signs of starting to shed so i told the kids to leave it alone. My son got a bright idea the other day to try and feed it a mouse that we had and it ate it while shedding while i was at work. Has anyone else tried to feed during shed and been successful. Today we had to help with the shed as it was not going well for the snake. Thank god for the sticky about the bad shed. It was a lifesaver. I have been lurking for a couple of weeks gathering info from the forum as i didnt know much about ball pythons. My wife kids and i go catch rattlers and bullsnakes. We feed them a mouse and then let them go a few days later. Now we have a snake they can actually hold. Anyways i thought i would check in and say what an awesome community that you have here and look forward to getting more pythons and learning all i can about them.