Adelita - 2019 Hypo Sonoran

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I remember when she used to be able to stick her coils out of this end of her log. Now, she can only really rest her head. She's a growing girl!

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Adelita was begging for food again, and luckily for her today was her scheduled feeding day!

Tried a new feeding method and left her mouse on a plastic lid so she could "hunt" for it. She wasn't as down with it as I'd thought she'd be. She actually ignored the mouse at first in favor of stalking over to the door/me. Normally she gets fed off the tongs, so it wasn't all that surprising. When left to her own devices, though, it was still quite a while before she quit stalking the door and made her way over to her mouse. She found it eventually, but when she did, she just parked herself right next to it and gave me an offended look! "Excuse me, Mother, but why is my mouse lukewarm and sitting on the ground? Reheat it and give it to me on the tongs, please!"

Reheated her mouse for her, fed her off the tongs, and lunch was down the hatch promptly. After that, she crawled right on up to her basking shelf and started stalking the location where she was just fed. It was a bit fun giving her a little wipe down to get some of the vitamin powder off her, but thankfully she calmed down after a few strokes with the hook.

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Such a gorgeous girl! My parents used to have a normal Red-Tailed boa, and now he is about 8ft long, but he started always mistaking them for food I suppose, and every time anyone would come around he would strike and try to bite no matter what we did. So I agree with her when she says hook training is a good idea. Many blessings to you and your new baby! I hope things turn out amazing and always stay that way!:)

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Originally Posted by WrongPython

... She found it eventually, but when she did, she just parked herself right next to it and gave me an offended look! "Excuse me, Mother, but why is my mouse lukewarm and sitting on the ground? Reheat it and give it to me on the tongs, please!" ...

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For all the talk about how snakes have such a good sense of smell, they do seem to get a bit lazy, don't they? Maybe our pets just aren't hungry enough, like they'd be on their own in the wild?

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Originally Posted by Bogertophis

For all the talk about how snakes have such a good sense of smell, they do seem to get a bit lazy, don't they? Maybe our pets just aren't hungry enough, like they'd be on their own in the wild?

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Heh, she's certainly been acting hungry enough! :P She's been leaning and pushing on her door since I fed Kuzco back on the 9th, with only a few days of respite earlier this week before a passing weather system keyed her up again.

I think Adelita's a little more keyed into her food's heat signature and movement than its scent when she's asked to actively hunt. Her sense of smell certainly seems pretty strong - she seems to be able to tell when I have snake food thawing in the kitchen, and she'll go into ambush position when I bring the bucket of food over to the snake cages. If I don't offer the prey straight to her in that initial ambush spot - in which case it's normally taken immediately - she needs to see a lot of movement and a warm prey item for her to come out and take it. When she does strike, she strikes hard and constricts the heck out of her food for quite some time. She definitely strikes me (thankfully not literally) as more of an ambush hunter and a snake that would prefer live prey if given the choice.

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Working off that food coma! She probably won't leave her basking shelf for another day or two.

I'm actually liking the uneven surface of the shelf itself. The right side is about an inch or so lower than the left, which gives Adelita a second hot spot that's about 2F cooler than her main one. Her parking herself on the secondary spot a good indicator that the RHP needs to be readjusted a tad. In this case, the main hot spot had rose to 89 F, so a quick redialing brought it back to her preferred 86 F - coincidentally, the secondary hot spot was 86 F when she was parked there.

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Love that enclosure and that critter! What did you use to cut the vents through your background?


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Originally Posted by jmcrook

Love that enclosure and that critter! What did you use to cut the vents through your background?

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Thanks!

It was a combination of an electric handsaw and a rechargeable Dremel Micro. Placed the background against the back wall, traced the slits on the backside of the background, used the electric handsaw to make the initial slits on the backside of the background, and came back in with the Dremel to widen the slits through the front. These backgrounds are TOUGH - the front portion is some sort of mix of plastic and stone, and my little Dremel Micro wasn't large and strong enough to punch through on its own. A larger, stronger, plug-in Dremel probably would have been, but not mine. It was able to widen the slits just fine on its own after they were made, though.

When I build my next display enclosure with a background, I'll probably go with a combination of side and top venting to avoid having to drill slits again. It was rather annoying.

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Originally Posted by WrongPython

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Adelita was begging for food again, and luckily for her today was her scheduled feeding day!

Tried a new feeding method and left her mouse on a plastic lid so she could "hunt" for it. She wasn't as down with it as I'd thought she'd be. She actually ignored the mouse at first in favor of stalking over to the door/me. Normally she gets fed off the tongs, so it wasn't all that surprising. When left to her own devices, though, it was still quite a while before she quit stalking the door and made her way over to her mouse. She found it eventually, but when she did, she just parked herself right next to it and gave me an offended look! "Excuse me, Mother, but why is my mouse lukewarm and sitting on the ground? Reheat it and give it to me on the tongs, please!"

Reheated her mouse for her, fed her off the tongs, and lunch was down the hatch promptly. After that, she crawled right on up to her basking shelf and started stalking the location where she was just fed. It was a bit fun giving her a little wipe down to get some of the vitamin powder off her, but thankfully she calmed down after a few strokes with the hook.

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I'm digging everything about this!

Beautiful setup and beautiful animal!

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Had Adelita out for a little exercise today to get things moving. She still has her last three meals in her, and mama says she's going to have to lighten her load if she wants more in a few weeks! She looks like a jolly little sausage right now, haha.

Side note: apparently the free version of Tapatalk has a monthly image cap now? Had another nice picture of her set up on her ledge, but the app won't let me post any more.

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