A friend came over today

[sarahlovesmiike]

to pick up a couple baby rats to keep as pets. She brought along her friend who just picked up a baby ball from Petco/PetSmart. She started asking me about my snakes enclosures, "Have they been in those bins for their whole lives? I'm trying to make mine grow." I explained that they are very lazy animals and sleep all the time and that was the enclosure that works best for my snakes. She seemed very snide but wasn't rude. She then goes on to tell me that her boyfriend was trying to get their ball on a diet of salmon and betta fish. I was like I didn't really want to get into the problems that could arise from this kind of behavior, so I kept talking about how little I actually knew about husbandry and feeding before I came to this site. It's hard to educate people who don't know anything about the species and don't care to learn. I felt so bad for her snake I gave her a few of my weanlings, hoping that she would feed him those instead of trying to force it to eat a betta fish...

Once she left I felt stupid for giving the rats to her but I just couldn't not give them to her. I'm hoping she will find this site, but I'm not sure that I was assertive enough :/ I know I didn't do anything good by giving her free meals and now I feel just dumb.


Sorry for the rant but no one else understood why this upset me so much, and I know all you guys will get where I'm coming from.

[mommanessy247]

fish?! are you serious?! omg poor snake.

[tiny_tiger60978]

Well...at least you helped out her snake...now it won't have to starve or eat a fish. Hopefully she'll join a forum and figure out enough to know better in the future.

[WingedWolfPsion]

Don't worry, you'll become more forceful with some practice. <lol>

[Eyeball]

Sometimes you just cant beat the stupid out of people......I almost never bring up the fact that i breed snakes or how large my collection is cause i always seam to run into people like your friend......they dont know anything , dont want to learn anything, think they know everything and just love to hear them selves talk. My fuse is just a little short when it comes to people like that!!!!!!

[moravaguy]

you cant fix stupid naw but really good go on giving some rats to her. but one thing would a ball ever even take a fish? keep up with that person also and show her more and more and they should come around.

[Kaorte]

Hey thats not as bad as this person I know of who keeps their snake in a fish tank....FULL OF WATER. The only "land" the snake has is a little floating turtle landing with a half long hide on it and a bright light shining down.

I tried contacting this person so I could help them out, but they wanted none of it. "The snake is perfectly fine".

Awful awful stuff..

[Foschi Exotic Serpents]

Here's the thing.. Let her try to get it to eat fish. It's a BP. It simply won't eat fish. Ever. It would stavre itself to death before eating anything which is not a warm blooded mammel.

Did you try to at least tell her that if she keeps it in a large enclosure without the right temperatures on hot and cool side and high humidity, that it will just starve anyway? That it will not eat due to stress. It will die from not being able to digest if it does eat, or it will just get sick and die anyway?

It's not a science to keep a BP healthy. The sad truth is, your friend will learn the hard way. When that happens I will not feel bad for her ignorance, I will feel bad for the poor BP.

[sarahlovesmiike]

you cant fix stupid naw but really good go on giving some rats to her. but one thing would a ball ever even take a fish? keep up with that person also and show her more and more and they should come around.

The thing is that I don't even know this girl... She came over with a friend of mine. I think I may talk to her about her friend, maybe she can get her to come here.

Hey thats not as bad as this person I know of who keeps their snake in a fish tank....FULL OF WATER. The only "land" the snake has is a little floating turtle landing with a half long hide on it and a bright light shining down.

I tried contacting this person so I could help them out, but they wanted none of it. "The snake is perfectly fine".

Awful awful stuff..

WOW

Here's the thing.. Let her try to get it to eat fish. It's a BP. It simply won't eat fish. Ever. It would stavre itself to death before eating anything which is not a warm blooded mammel.

Did you try to at least tell her that if she keeps it in a large enclosure without the right temperatures on hot and cool side and high humidity, that it will just starve anyway? That it will not eat due to stress. It will die from not being able to digest if it does eat, or it will just get sick and die anyway?

It's not a science to keep a BP healthy. The sad truth is, your friend will learn the hard way. When that happens I will not feel bad for her ignorance, I will feel bad for the poor BP.

I just kept talking about how well they do in my enclosures and how they couldn't thrive in a big tanks, how they eat shed and poop regularly... Lo and behold her snake hasn't pooped for her yet, hasn't had a full shed, and eats 2-4 rat pups WHEN SHE HAS THE MONEY... Hence the reason she's trying to feed it her dead betta...


I was like "They tend to be extremely picky and imprint on prey, but good luck with tthat."

[sarahlovesmiike]

Oh and she was saying by keeping it in a large tank that it would grow faster... All I could think about was that thread about the bonsai kitten