Performing with snakes: Too Stressful for BPs?

[redshepherd]

I probably should have clarified that my snake died just under 11 months after I last performed with him. I sometimes took him out on the porch or in the yard on humid days, but he died in March in Ohio; I hadn't taken him out of the house since the previous August or September--it tends to get too cold in Ohio after that. The fact that he died from a bacterial infection threw me off because I was meticulous about maintaining the cleanliness of his enclosure. Before he died, I had been having trouble maintaining the humidity in his enclosure, so I had changed him to a tub. I told the vet all of this, but he focused on my performing with him. I guess I'll never know for sure, but I am worried that performing added to his stress levels, though he was eating and shedding fairly frequently in the 11 months between his last performance and his death.

I thank you all for your responses, but they do concern me because of those I know who perform with snakes, and of the snake educators I know, like BGSU's Dr. Underwood, with whom I used to take BPs and other reptiles into classrooms to educate children when I was an undergrad way back when. Is this also dangerously stressful for BPs?

I promise I'm not trying to be argumentative, and I truly apologize if I'm coming off that way. I'm just getting a lot of contradictory information about snakes, and I want to be clear and well informed so I can be the best possible pet owner I can be with my next BP.

Well, like Jodan said, each animal is an individual. What can stress out some ball pythons may not stress others. Some ball pythons curl into a ball right away when afraid or stressed, while some will never become a ball or some will just strike and act temperamental.

If it were my snake personally, I would choose to just play it safe and only handle in the home. Since there seems to be contradictory information, I'd think it would be better to take all sides into account, and make your best decision based on what we all know about ALL ball pythons for fact- they need warmth, they spend many hours of a day hiding comfortably, and they may or may not show any indicators when they are stressed or ill, until it's too late.