My friend is magic and I want to be magic too!

[hungba]

I have a friend who is very experienced snake keeper and he is a magician. That's the only way I can explain it but I want to be a magician too.

I met him in 2006 when I got my first ball python and he was a local guy here who responded when I asked where to buy rats. I met him and we became friends. At that point he already had rack fulls of snakes of many different kinds and lots of balls, so experienced to the point where, you know how some guys, they kept so many they don't really care so much about the details anymore.

Since then, I have gotten more ball pythons and currently I have one rack. Most of them eating with no problems whatsoever, and yes I can go through all the details hot end cool end tub size blah blah but I have asked extensively already. There were TWO balls that refused to eat when I got them, everyone else ate fine and grows fine. The first ball I got that did not eat, I asked him and after a few weeks of struggling with it, he decided to "try" for me. I gave him the snake and he let it settle at his place for two days and then sent me pictures of the snake eating and full stomach the whole series of pics just to "rub it in" that my snake had no problem. Now fast forward a few months, ANOTHER snake I got refused to eat. I tried live, I tried f/t, I tried braining, chicken soup, tease feeding, mice, rats, HECK HE himself came to my house to try to feed it several times and it did not eat. So I said why don't I give you the snake for a few weeks and see if it eat. I gave it to him last night, and he didn't even wait for it to settle down just fed it at his place and it ate TWO RATS!

So natural conclusion there is something about his place that is different from mine so he came over to my house again and inspected my rack, tested all the temperatures everything and he said there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with my set ups! I asked him many times he has been to my place twice to inspect and he said that nothing is wrong. And I asked him so what did he do differently than I did and he said nothing he just offered the darn rat and it ate.

By the way, he has kept snakes for like a decade and he told me that he has NEVER had ANY snake go off feed AT ALL, EVER. Even the most experienced keepers like top breeders will sometimes have snakes that go off feed, but he, has NEVER had one refuse any meal.

So the only conclusion is that he knows MAGIC. He denies it and says he doesn't know magic but I think he does and is hiding something so I am asking here. How do I learn MAGIC?