And my girlfriend purchased a red tail boa

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Boas love to eat and boas have a slow metabolism. So boas get fat quick and lose weight slow. It's like a recipe for disaster by Mother Nature lol.

Actually it's a recipe for survival in the wild - they only need to eat a few times a year to survive once they reach adulthood. The recipe for disaster comes when they are overfed by well-meaning but uneducated keepers who get them so fat that the boa becomes obese and dies.