I see no problem with you posting it from there Rusty. You gave credit to the source and it's a relevent topic for this forum.

How sad that this sort of thing gets attention but the responsible, careful owners of large snakes never get in the press do they. Nobody wants to read "family owns large snakes and hey their kids have never been hurt by them!".

I know a lot of people think Mike and I are overly cautious with Tequila, our 9 foot boa but this sort of thing is the reason why. Tequila is strong enough to seriously hurt our 7 year old. For his sake, for our family's sake and also for Tequila's sake we planned really carefully before we ever got her to avoid this happening (you cannot ever plan for everything but we've tried hard). We don't want our decision to house a 9 foot snake to impact on others rights to own snakes so yes, we're very careful of what we do with her.

Tequila lives in a custom enclosure that is always padlocked. The walls of her enclosure and the door are solid and thick wood, not flimsy stuff. Only Mike and I hold the keys for her door and those keys are never left at home when we aren't home. Since we have teenagers and teenagers sometimes forget rules, we won't chance one of them taking Tequila out when we aren't around. Our house policy is also that both Mike and I must be home and in the room if Tequila's home is unlocked for any reason even just a quick addition to her water bowl.

This might all seem a bit much for a 9 foot snake but I figure better too much then not enough.