Evil baby - best ways to tame...

I have one like this. The good news is, the older she gets, the calmer she gets.

My advice: Leave her alone for a week, and make sure she always feels secure. Start SLOWLY. Hang around when she eats. Be sure to stop if she shows any sign of defensiveness--back off at that point. Don't let her get worked up to the point where she bites.

When you go to pick her up, move quickly--not so fast it's startling, but simply smoothly reach in and pick her up mid-body, opposite side from her head, and support her well--don't grab or restrain her. Don't hesitate, or give her warning that you're about to pick her up--that just gives her a chance to decide to strike. She'll probably NOT tag you if you just reach in fairly quickly after opening the cage. Remember that she'll strike at anything that approaches her even while she's in your hands, but she PROBABLY will not strike at the hands she is resting in, unless you move your fingers around too much.

Keep sessions very short. The point is to teach her that being picked up doesn't result in anything bad happening to her--including excessive emotional distress. Our female would get so worked up she'd just bite and bite and bite--she doesn't learn anything from that except to keep biting. Snakes aren't too bright, but they do form habits. You don't want a defensive pose to become habit, so try to make sure she spends as little time in that pose as possible. If that means leaving her alone completely until she's older, then so be it.

Our little spitfire can now be picked up and weighed, and moved to clean her cage, with reasonable certainty that she will not bite us. She was hatched in late August, so this is good progress--in the beginning, we had to distract her with a paper towel roll or use a hook, and we got tagged many times, lol. She is still a very nervous and high-strung animal, and we don't handle her a lot--but she's getting better.