Meant to post - but was called away - just got back home today and gearing for enclosure cleaning en masse (hers being the exception).
She's made a bound of improvement on all fronts.
She DID take the offered rat pup and has been really great in letting me treat her - no flattening or heavy breathing while I do so - just kind of looks at me then finds something else to look at. When I take her out and back in to do this she is now cool with it - no striking and it's all by hand.
I'll go into a LOT more detail in a little while after I get the cleaning taken care of for most of the other herps in the house - just saw this and wanted to quickly say she's eaten and really settled in well over the past week - still going slow with her but the necessitated and unavoidable interactions are night and day.
More this evening - Neph (AfRock) shed the other day (another nice 1 piece) and since she skipped her last meal due to the impending shed she's RAVENOUS and in hunting mode - soon as I have them all taken care of I'll hop back on.
Indeed - she's still pretty much in isolation and doing much better - interaction is still only as necessitated. Though she doesn't seem to appreciate it when I am wearing a black T-shirt LOL hehe - maybe I remind her of a bird silhuoette from some instinctual vestige or it's just contrast.
K, are you at all familiar with the optical physiology in pythons in terms of cone and rod distribution?
She took her second rat pup pretty fast - good news there. Her striking has diminished significantly but I am still not handling her much other than to apply the betadine, and when I do that I usually lift her out with a hook. She is intense. I have to sort of nudge her head back from her tail so I can lift it for the application pretty much every time, and she's calmest if she has a little hunk of sphagnum masking her head. It's clear when I go to do this she's thinking "AND WHY THE HELL ARE YOU LIFTING MY TAIL!?". A few times I have put her back by hand and not gotten any "thank-you's" by mouth. She seems a lot less stressed by that operation than she does when her lid comes off.
Reply With Quote
