Help!!! Asap!

[Vypyrz]

Ok. Here is what you need to get for this week.

At Lowes or Home Depot:
- Lutron lamp dimmer. This will let you adjust the heat lamp to help maintain temps. Cost- about $10. It will look something like this...

http://www.lutron.com/Products/Stand.../Overview.aspx

If you can't find one, then you may have to check at some of your local pet stores and see if you can find a rheostat, which is the same thing as a dimmer, it just costs more. Cost- about $20 and looks like one of these two...

http://www.bigappleherp.com/Rheostats

Also, while you are at Lowes or Home Depot, see if they have any of the Acu-Rite Indoor/Outdoor Thermometers with Humidty. Cost- about $12.

At local pet shop:
-Cage clips. If you have those books holding down the screen top. Bad Idea. Eventually the snake will figure out a way to escape. Cage clips will hold the lid down. If they are there for just covering the top, then we will fix that as well. If you need the clips, get 4. One for each corner. Cost- $5-$8. They look like this...

http://www.bigappleherp.com/Sure-Lok...c=2&category=4

At Wal-Mart and/or your local dollar store (Dollar General, Family Dollar, etc...)
- 1 roll of Aluminum tape
- 1 piece of dark colored poster board
- 2 plastic bowls. These are for making 2 identical hides. The half logs usually don't offer the security that Ball Pythons like and they are almost impossible to clean if they get poop or pee on them. You are also going to need a way to either cut, grind, or melt an entrance hole into the side of the bowls. Some ways to do this are soldering iron, wood burning iron, dremmel tool, hack saw, etc. If you don't have or can't borrow a way to make the entrances, you can find the soldering irons at Wal-Mart in the tool section for about $10 and the wood burning irons should be in the arts and crafts section also about $10.
- Aluminum foil
-Scotch tape or some clear packing tape.
- You are going to have to remove/relocate your temp gages so you may need something like some type of knife or blade to remove them. If you can find an Acu-Rite, then you won't need to re-use them. If you can't find the Acu-Rite at Lowes, Home Depot or Wal-Mart, then you may need to get some of those double sided sticky pads at Wal-Mart in the Hardware section to re-mount them.

Basically, for this week, we are going to:
1) Make the heat lamp controllable
2) Make 2 identical hides. 1 for the warm side and 1 for the cool side. This will allow the snake to move back and forth to thermoregulate. Alot of times only having one hide, the snake will choose security over comfort.
3) Secure the top down (If needed).
4) Cover the top to help with heat and humidity.
5) Replace/ relocate the dial gages.
6) cover the back and sides to add a little more security.
Let me know when you get what you can find we'll go through the modifications and it should get you through the week. Then we will look at getting the belly heat and thermostat, which you can also do for $40-$50.