We just got our baby ball python today. When we got her home we opened the lid of the deli container she was in, put it on its side in her new home, and sat back to watch. It took her very little time to crawl out of the deli container and start exploring. And exploring. And exploring.

I would guess it was at least 2 hours later when she finally slowed down. She just went around and around her tank, and made circles around her hides and water bowl, and crawled over the tops of them, and knocked over the Accurite temp/humidity gauge, and crawled up the sides as much as she could. She made more than one trip from one end of the tank to the other without touching the ground because she crawled on top of all the things in the tank.

But she never went in the hides. When she finally did sort of curl up to rest, it was beside the thermometer. One time somewhere in the middle of her activities, I picked up one of the hides and placed it carefully over her, because I thought maybe the reason she was running around so much was because she couldn't find a place to hide if she couldn't find the entrances or something. This did get her to freeze for a minute but once she realized the hide wasn't going to eat her she just crawled right out. We tried it again after she seemed ready to rest, but she just crawled out from under the hide and returned to the place beside the thermometer.

The activity level was higher than I expected. But it was evening and part of the reason we fell in love with this baby was that she was the most out-going BP hatchling we've encountered in the month or so since we started seriously looking at them, so it didn't totally surprise me either.

However, the refusal to go/stay in a hide does seem strange to me. Should we be concerned? Do snakes sometimes take a while to learn to use the hides in a new home? She seems to want to go up, and the entrances to the hides are at the ground level, so maybe she doesn't realize she can get inside?

Any insights would be very appreciated! Thanks!