I just received my beautiful BEL on March 28th, I haven't handled her as I was letting her get use to her environment and she took her first feed Monday. She is about 7 months old and weighs around 200 grams, she is currently eating large mice and I am going to upgrade her to rat pups the next time she eats. She lives in a 36x18x12 tank, she has 2 hides one on the hot and one of the cold side. I also placed fake leaves around the cage and she sometimes hides in them, and she has aspen bedding for substrate. I use ceramic heat emitters for heat, and the hot side temperature registers around 90-95 and the cold side around 80-85 degrees, and the humidity is around 50-60%. I went into her cage to hold her for the first time, and she immediately curled up in a ball, I started to pet her to let her know I was there, then she turned around and snapped at me drawing blood. I then tried to handle her again, not backing down and she snapped again. I didn't want to stress her out anymore so I put the lid on the cage and left her to be since I wasn't making any progress. I decided to look in the cage and she isn't using her hides and is curled up in the corner of her cage in a striking position. I don't want to stress her out, I just want to handle her. Should I use a snake hook to get her out of the cage? What should I do to calm her down to be able to handle her?
Thank you for your time,
Billy