My boa fed! And a question

[freelancer]

Last week I tried feeding my Solomon Island boa a f/t pinky. He had zero interest in it, and in fact ran away from it when I presented it to him. So I left the pinky overnight but ended up having to toss him in the morning.

I got a live pinky today, and though my snake was sleeping, he was quickly roused by the pinky - at the end of my tongs - being brushed against the leaves of his tree. He checked it out and snatched it away in a blurry-fast motion, started putting the squeeze on it, and quickly disposed of the little mouse. Within a few minutes, the pinky was gone.

I wanted to shoot some pictures but I would have had to use flash, and didn't want to disturb his first proper feeding. I'll finally take him out in a few days and shoot some pics for you guys to get a good look.

By the way, I finally named him: Chew. There's a character in the 1982 movie, Blade Runner, named Chew; he makes eyes for the renegade androids (the replicants) in the movie. For some reason, I thought of the name and it just stuck. So now my boa's named Chew.

And here's the question: Is the main difference in appearance between the SI tree boa and the ground (Paulsoni) the banding? Mine has the zigzag pattern, pinstripe down the back, while all the trees I see on the Net have splotches. In that case, I can stop researching because Chew's definitely a Paulsoni. It's hard to get a definite answer on the web as I see a few differing opinions. But if the zigzag's the telltale, then there's no doubt I have a ground (who loves trees, lol). Right now he's about 16 inches.

Finally, here's a pic from last week, while I was defrosting the f/t pinky. I swear I felt like a damn crackhead, "cooking" my next fix

[freelancer]

It looks like I do have a ground boa, after a little more searching for some confirmation. Cool!

I hope they start including these guys in more books in the near future, it's hard to find a proper reference to ID the subspecies.