First time handling

They really are an easy snake to handle... but the not waggling fingers is a good idea. :)

Be consistent. I always scoop from the side and do not come in from the face.

If he is attending to what you're doing, does not mean he is going to bite, just means he is being a good snake and keeping up on what is happening.

I do both, pick them up while they are out slumming around, as well as lift the hide. Just don't make silly errors, like lifting the hide by the door way... fingers in the door... pretty tempting stuff to nip at. :)

Bruce

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Originally Posted by Bruce Whitehead

They really are an easy snake to handle... but the not waggling fingers is a good idea. :)

Be consistent. I always scoop from the side and do not come in from the face.

If he is attending to what you're doing, does not mean he is going to bite, just means he is being a good snake and keeping up on what is happening.

I do both, pick them up while they are out slumming around, as well as lift the hide. Just don't make silly errors, like lifting the hide by the door way... fingers in the door... pretty tempting stuff to nip at. :)

Bruce

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im guilty of the doorway lift.if i get bit i do,oh well.i kinda want it to happen sooner or later.

I'm a doorway lifter as well..the first few times I did it I was like "Ehh..I'm not sure this is a good idea", but did it anyways. Now I don't think twice about it, which means I'll prolly get nipped in the somewhat near future

Alright well I'm going to give him a third feeding today and then in a few days I'll give it a go with handling for the first time. Thanks for all the input everyone!

I'm new to snakes too... one thing I learned that works for me is to lift the hide and if her head sticks out like she's being super-alert, I would put my palm flat over her, which makes her duck her head, and then I would use the same palm on a smooth movement to go on the thick part of her coil (she's usually coiled up when she's in the hide) and lift slowly. Lately, I've been using both hands to lift as she's starting to get too big for me to lift the entire coil single-handedly. The open-palm thing makes your hand look big to the snake so she won't easily mistake it as a rat or something.
Needless to say, I haven't tried lifting her when she's out and about and not coiled up. But, I've watched my husband lift her off her log plenty of times (she likes to climb at night - I guess trying to check if we left her some escape routes) and what he does is the same flat-palm routine over the top of her neck (not too close to the head) and another hand about 2/3 down her body and then just fold his fingers gently around the body and when he gets a firm grip, then lift. At which point he would guide her body into a coil so she sits firmly over his hands.
Then, of course, after a little while she would start to do laps... she would uncoil and crawl out of our hands. So, we would just let her crawl over one hand then when she gets almost half her body through the hand, then we would move the other hand under her neck and let her crawl through that hand, and on and on until she settles down again. Almost like pulling rope, I guess, but without the pressure. We don't try to restrict her. She's quite strong for a 3-foot long snake so we would have to apply pressure to restrict her and we just don't feel it is necessary.
I'm really new to this, but hopefully this helps! And I'm sure if I'm doing something wrong, somebody would be along shortly for a correction.