Crow's Intro Thread

[Tbcrow]

Hello to all, I figured the best way to make a first post was to dive right in, so here we go. Note, this is actually worth the read, I'm pseudo interesting, occasionally.

I've always loved snakes. Correction, I've always loved things that give other people the heeby jeebies. If I can make my friends crawl up a wall, I'm fairly pleased. I, like so many others, have invested a significant portion of the last 6 years in World of Warcraft. A fellow guild member from Ohio kept rubbing that she had a snake in my face (without realizing she was), and made me desire one exclusively. My current living arrangement's didn't provide for me to have roaming animals, so I figured why not on a snake.

My biggest problem, I'm notoriously impatient. I have been reading for about a month. Anything I can find about Ball Pythons, snakes, building terrarium ideas, I absolutely devoured. Finally I looked online and saw that the local Reptile Expo was coming to Raleigh the first weekend in September. Okay cool, gives me plenty of time to prep. I go to Pet Smart (I know I know) and buy the essentials, water bowl, tank, hides, quality heating pad, thermometer/hydrometer.



So I bring all of this awesomeness back home and setup. Now my friend from Ohio is a big fan of slate bottoms to her tanks. It allows for easy clean up, makes a nice warming surface for sunlight, and just looks better than a box of aspen to me. I went to Lowes and bought a few boxes of 4x4 slate pieces. These worked alright, but I pulled them out within 30 minutes. Half of them are now planned Christmas presents, drink coasters ahoy. There is a point here, it's cheaper to buy 9 slate tiles for 3$ and have coasters than to buy 4 for 20$, just for those who are interested.



Slate attempt #1 left me extremely unimpressed. Ohio Lady, this will be the re-occurring nickname, persisted. She promised that if I went darker, and went larger, I would be much more impressed. Trip #2 to Lowes yielded fantastic results, and I am nothing but satisfied. The tile warms nicely with the under tank heater, without ever feeling hot to the touch, and it just looks damn good. This was all fine and dandy, except for one thing, I didn't have a snake.

There is me, I'm sitting on the end of bed staring at this tank (an awesome one I might add), that was sitting there lonely and unused. Sure it made a great corner decoration, but once someone has pressed their greasy nose to the glass and realized nothing is in it, you've lost them forever. I started researching vendors for the Raleigh Expo. I wanted to know what they would be bringing and what kind of prices they offered. Quite a few of the vendors are in North Carolina, and 1 was well within an acceptable driving distance that caught my eye. I packed up the girlfriend, called ahead to make sure it was a real store, and went along my merry way. Upon arriving I was not entirely enthused, this place felt down right seedy. I'll omit the name, simply because I don't feel places should be judged upon the look, or maybe I just don't know what is trashy or not.



D-Day, excitement time, inspection! The storage bin was about what I could call the tank. It had 4 items in it, repti carpet, a large water bowl, and 2 snakes. That's it. The color of the first snake didn't seem right to me. He looked, faded, but it wasn't a morph or a shed coming on type faded, I can't really lay my finger on it. Normally when your gut tells you something though, it's for a good reason. Snake #2 though, was perfect. Great color, super responsive and friendly, not stressed at all, I couldn't hear him breathing and he certainly didn't look like he had any respiratory distress. At some point from the time I had left the house to the time I had gotten to the store I had decided I didn't want a baby. I wanted something a little older, a little more hardy, with some mileage under those scales. Mr. Snake was right at 1.5 years old, looked more than happy to see me, and honestly I'd have felt damn guilty leaving him in that sad excuse of a store while he was still healthy.

Car ride, one word, hilarious. Nothing beats plopping a snake in a bag down and informing your significant other that she gets to be the snake warmer for the ride home. It was 104 degrees outside today, so either all 3 of us we're going to sweat our collective skins off, or I was going to run the AC and she would have to deal. Eventually she agreed, and amid much shrieks and "oh my god it's moving"'s, we made it home without much in the way of an event.



The most difficult part about the ride home was deciding on a name. I am HUGE on naming animals something that isn't entirely cliche, isn't flimsy (sam, bub, spot, ect), and something that means something to you. While I was growing up, Disney was in it's prime. They were cranking out more animated cartoons than parents wallets could handle, and with the advent of CGI/Toy Story and a slower production schedule, allowed them to breathe a sigh of relief. My #1 all time favorite movie is Robin Hood, but I felt naming a snake Hiss was just sort of week. Besides, who wants a coward that gets tied in knots by a cat, he's a Lion, but he's still a cat. It clicked, Jungle Book, Kaa, it must be, thus it was. Kaa halfway ate the kid, this Mr. Snake was starting out with a gangster name off the bat, maybe one day I could feed him small children too.



First problem arose within 30 minutes, the genius had never had a hide, ever. He got stuck in short order trying to back out with three coils overlapping through the door. I quickly reconsidered the living arrangements. This cage was built with the purpose of a munchkin, dummy me never expected a snake of 1.5 years. I guiltily removed all of his furniture, except for the water bowl, and he happily curled up beside the heating pad area and went right to sleep. Tomorrow I will have to procure a much larger hide environment, that even the snakes mommy called special could enter and exit properly.



Problem number two is how he was raised. The pet store in question live fed. Every Tuesday for the last 1.5 years this boyo has been getting a living, breathing, and moving mouse. When I inspected him he had 0 scaring, so this lead me to believe this kid was at least good at it. I've read nightmare stories about Ball Python's having terrible aim, and hurting themselves from a poor rear strike. In addition to this, I had already decided on not doing 100% live feeding. Pre-Killing isn't my thing either, so I was going to use heavily stunned mice, to stack the odds majorly in Kaa's favor. He gets something that is alive, and I don't have to worry about a mouse chewing his face off. Now I'm going to have to slowly wean him off of live mice, which looks to be a long, painful road.



The last a probably most concerning issue for me. I've Googled eye caps, and I cannot find one that looks like this. This leads me to believe that either all eye caps look different, or he has an old injury on his right eye. I've tested his vision from that side, and he reacts to my hand movements when they are only in that eye's line of site, so I'm fairly certain he isn't blind on his right. I was going to maintain a 60% humidity till his next shed, to see if that could help solve the issue.



Finally, here I sit, with the biggest concern of all. I'm at work during third shift. It's a shame not to be home on the first night, and I hope he turns down the escape artist feelings for just a night at least.

Thanks! Will
www.willshuck.net