Darling Clementine

Another hatchday this week, for my female - she's one year old! I've mentioned her a few times but never really posted a thread about her, because honestly she's just a friendly, easygoing snake who loves eating food and knocking everything off my bookshelves, so I haven't had a lot of questions about her. People always ask what her morphs are - she is Redstripe Yellowbelly Vanilla, het for clown, possibly Orange Dream and het for Gstripe as well. As far as I can tell, she's one of a kind - I've never seen a picture or mention of another snake online with her particular combination of genetics or such a crazy pattern. She's getting more and more speckly and interesting with each shed.
Ponzu's always been weirdly clingy and attached to me, and with his quirks and all I think he'll always be my favorite, but when people come over or ask for pictures Clementine is the one they always ask to see - she's equally friendly with everybody and just fun to have around.
Back when I got her in November, she could fit in one of my hands:
https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...om/PMt4chE.jpg
https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...om/m1a4xLF.jpg

As she's grown she developed a mysterious white stripe nobody seems to be able to explain:
https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...om/k7wZlOU.jpg

Here she is this week, freshly shed - she had a scrape on top of her head but luckily it seems to be healing up well!
https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...om/lr1LOpB.jpg
https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...om/J0MpUG2.jpg

I hadn't planned on getting another snake so soon after getting Ponzu, but I saw her picture and couldn't get her out of my head - I even swore off morphmarket for an entire month and refused to look at the ad. When I inevitably caved later, her price had been reduced and I took it as a sign :wuv: so she lives here now. She's nearly tripled in size and doubled in length since I got her, the way young BPs grow is just crazy.

She's gorgeous- I can see why you caved. :cool:

Congrats! Stunning reptile for sure. The white stripe could be representative of the indwelling influence of g stripe is what I’m thinking.

She is beautiful.


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At 14 months old, Clementine's yellows seem to be starting to fade - the lighting here is exaggerating it but it is noticeable in person as well. Her red stripe is really starting to assert itself with some very nice speckling but her markings haven't blurred as much as I thought they would, and her blacks are still very intense. She's the same age Ponzu was when I first got him, but she weighs more than 3x what he did then, and is nearly a foot longer. The white stripe down her back is also less apparent now that her surrounding colors are fading away. Watching her markings change slowly over time is so fascinating.

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...om/t6DuBkH.jpg

I've had several keepers express shock at Clementine's sheer size for her age - she hit 700g at around a year of age so I stopped weighing her, figuring she seemed solidly on track. She probably weighs a bit more now and is at least 40 inches in length from the rough measurements I've been able to get. From what I can see at this age there's quite a large range of what's considered "normal" but she's at the high end of it (my male is a runt and is at the low end of it - when he was a year old he weighed only 260g!), and because she's long she seems fine in proportion to me. I wonder if she's just an early bloomer of if she'll wind up being unusually big as an adult too - just have to wait and see I guess!
Also, it turns out she was in shed in the last picture - freshly shed her colors are back and popping:
https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...om/WqPPG0A.jpg

Yeah, I wouldn't worry about weighing her either, lol. She's beautiful & very healthy-looking. Female BPs usually eat more & grow faster than the males & she sure is doing her part. :D

Updating this thread because her shed test results came back and she is het for Gstripe! So people's suspicions may have been correct that the stripe could be a marker, or interacting with a codom to show the het. (Or it could be totally unrelated!)

Clemmy continues to get huge, so earlier this year I ordered a PVC enclosure for her. I went with a 36" x 18" x 18" with a 80w RHP installed. I hear you say, but that's too small for an adult female bp! It is! She's going to live in it for around 6 months to a year (depending on how ridiculous her growth spurt is this year) while I save up for a 4 foot one she can use permanently. Then Ponzu will inherit this one, since he's 3 years old and probably not getting too much bigger.

Once I built the enclosure I spent awhile breaking in the RHP so I let her explore the tank a few times before I moved her into it so it wouldn't be too much of a shock. The first night in she literally climbed the walls and went all over the place - I was surprised how much force she applied to the doors too but they held up. Since then she has settled and I often see her out basking at night, and as time goes by she's been putting her head and neck out of the hide to bask those parts during the day. The thing giving her the most trouble are the glass doors - her old bin was cloudy plastic and had an opaque lid, so I think she feels kind of exposed and the light annoys her during the day - she will tilt the back of the hide up to bury the door opening and block the light so she can sleep. I draped a towel over the top half of the doors while she adjusts. I was really concerned when I fed her in there for the first time that she would strike at the glass and hurt herself, but she seemed so confused about the food coming in sideways to her instead of down from above that she never got wound up enough to do that. Now the issue is that she's regressed a little on going into food mode any time I open the door so we've had some remedial tap training, which has gone well. Overall I think she's really going to be happy in the bigger tank once she settles in (just in time for me to move her again!). I noticed when she sits in her basking spot she's been getting a little closer to the doors every day and is starting to curiously watch the comings and goings in that room during the day.

Checking out the new digs. You can see she's going to outgrow it pretty quickly once she starts getting longer:
https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...om/hQJQ2so.png

Basking a little. Taking pictures through the glass is hard because of the glare.
https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...om/zWNB5QC.png

Clemmy came home 2 years ago today - here she is the day she arrived:

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...om/Mpj7hNR.jpg

And today:

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...om/amKhuka.jpg

She's just a tad larger! In fact holding her at that angle for long enough to get pictures was giving me an arm workout :P