Out of curiosity, how important is it not to handle the new snake for the first week or so? I only ask because when we got our first two BPs (before I ever discovered this forum), we handled them almost daily from the first day we brought them home and did not notice any negative effects. Also, we have been handling the baby girl I picked up earlier this week on a daily basis and also have not seen any negative effects. In fact, she ate two rat pups yesterday (of course, I didn't handle her yesterday at all because it was feeding day). So, I'm just wondering whether we were lucky or whether we could have done some harm by the immediate handling.