Hey everyone. [Long post incoming]

I’ve been contemplating it for a long time now, and I think I might decide to give away (have someone adopt) my ball python Freya. Despite me trying to get her used to handling she still bites me (or clothing sometimes) like she’s trying to feed. Admittedly, and especially recently, I have not had as much time as I’ve wanted to allocate to handling her. I’m sure this is negatively affecting her sociability, and I can see that now she is more cautious of me than she has been before.
Several months back I even started using gloves for a while because I was developing anxiety towards her latching onto me when I needed to be somewhere else soon or go to sleep. It just hasn’t been a good time, and I feel disappointed that I never developed a good relationship with her. I feel disappointed in myself for having raised her incorrectly, and I’m worried because of this she will not have as comfortable of a life with her next owner. I also don’t see myself having the time in the future I need to further invest in her care, since I’ve been swamped with work during college, and I’m graduating soon, so I’ll probably have an even more time consuming job.

On the care side of things, I’ve still been attempting to feed her about every week or week and a half, but she seems to refuse food frequently. After about two and a half months straight of her being off feed I caved last week and bought a live mouse, which she took, thankfully. The only thing is I gave it to her fresh killed (since I was afraid of this larger prey item possibly hurting her) following a YouTube tutorial, and I’ve been a bit devastated ever since taking the life of something else like that. I’d fed her live a couple of times before when she was very young before she would take F/T, but those were pinkies and she was safe eating them and did the killing so it didn’t feel as bad. It’s probably dumb or irrelevant, but that was the final reason since I don’t know how successful I’ll be continuing to feed her F/T rodents and I don’t want to feed her live again. She’s also definitely underweight for her age (2 1/2 years) due to refusal of food, despite me offering the usual ~10% of her weight in grams.

I think I’ll have to accept that keeping snakes just isn’t for me and maybe take a break from owning a pet for a while.

Sorry for the pity story, but I wanted to post my reasons. I’m not sure where to go from here, or where to list an adoption thread. I want to make sure Freya can go to a home that can give her better care than I ever could and live out the rest of her days happily, so I don’t want to send her off to some crazy rando. I’m sure (or at least I hope) someone more experienced in snake care will have no problem giving her the care she needs (I also don’t want to give her to a beginner in case they have similar difficulties).

[TL;DR] Contemplating giving Freya away to a more capable owner since I’m pretty discouraged and think someone else can take better care of her. Also, possibly afraid of snakes a bit, and unwilling to feed live anymore.


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