If you don't want to read all the way through my babbles below I'll give you the short version: If you have the resources, I highly recommend assisting with a reptile rescue. The tiny amount of effort of taking care of one more ball python (or herp of your choice) is nothing compared with the amazingly rewarding opportunity to do something good.

Ok - longer version -

My wife is an avid pet rescue person, we're doing transports or overnight fosters or paperwork or something every weekend. I have a friend who does pet and wildlife rescue work. My friend invited me to his wildlife rehabilitation person's house for a small get together. Along with getting to feed a baby racoon, I got put on "the list" of people who might be able to help rescue, rehab, and foster reptiles.

About 1.5 weeks ago I got a call that my friend had delivered 3 ball pythons to the wildlife rehab; they were all confiscated from a drug bust house. The wild life rehabber called to ask if I could help with at least one of the snakes. The largest (a female we think, haven't found anyone to probe her yet), was only eating live (according to her previous owner), and was agressive. The lady that runs the wildlife rehab has a house filled with mice, rats, degus, squirrles, and various other soft-n-fuzzy critters. She was just heartbroken having to buy a mouse from the pet store and watch it feed live. She actually likes snakes but just "doesn't have the stomach for feeding live".

My wife and I quickly put together a rubbermaid enclosure with hides, a UTH and a Ranco; it's in our bedroom, away from all the other pets. We did 3 days of mite treatment (not a single mite in sight), and tried our first feed after a week in our care. During the week the only time the snake saw a human or light was during the quick mite rub-down treatment. Our first feeding was tried with a PK adult mouse that had spend overnight in the fridge (error at petstore, they PK'ed it for us). The foster snake struck twice at the mouse, and then once at the tongs, then once at me, and once at the top of the rubbermaid. Less than 5 minutes later the mouse was gone. So we PK'ed a second and got a single strike and calmer eating.

2 days with no light or contact later the first short handling session was pretty ok.

2 more days later (tonight), I tried my first extended handling session and wound up giving her a soak.

I spend maybe 30 or 40 minutes total between some husbandry, the soak, and some handling. The snake has calmed down and is almost as mellow as my 2 year old.

The half hour or so spent with this rescued, agressive, live-eating snake is on my top-five list of best herp experiences to date.

So, when she's off PK and onto FT and eaten 4 or 5 times I'll post her to this group and petfinder through the rescue group. The only risk is that I'm already thinking about how great it would be to keep her.

Like I said, if you have an empty rubbermaid and a tiny bit of time you'd be amazed how much joy a "regular BP" can bring.

Sorry for the babble...