Freshly shed Caesar ready for dinner

[CloudtheBoa]

Lol yeah the camera is fun. As for size, mines maybe a little bigger. I think he had a growth spurt. I swear he was about 3' when I got him and now he seems to 4' from just eyeballing him crawling back into his cage. No way he put on 12" in a week but I swear it seems like it when I held him today lol. Also your guy I think was born after mine. Caesar was born 5-18-16.

At one point River grew 1.5' in a matter of 2-3 weeks. That was when she was eating two medium rats since I didn't have any larges on hand, and one or two meals later she was on jumbos. Grew faster on two mediums than she did on rabbits twice the size she's getting now.

I concur. I just had Wallace chill with me for over 30 minutes.

Once a retic settles in and you know their habits, they are very predictable snakes. My fella ALMOST seems to enjoy the interaction. I'm certain he is just tolerating it, but I feel the lack of defensiveness and ability to totally chill is a sign of a relaxed snake in my case.

If you look at tongue flicks and watch their sides for heavy breathing you can see if there is stress. Obviously posture plays a role as well. But if Sauzo and I are experiencing very similar signs from our animals, I'd venture to guess these guys from Vital Exotics settle in fairly quickly.

A very experienced friend of mine told me that a retic will give PLENTY of indication if it is going to bite.

They do have some teeth though LOL.

Same with scrubs and other semi arboreal and arboreal snakes.

The bottom line is I don't want to take from any adult snake.

If you want to see a brutal bite, I'll post some pictures of a bite I took from a dog during a protection training exercise that lasted a fraction of a second.

I had more trauma inflicted from that quarter second bite than any bite I ever taken from a snake. Had this dog actually wanted to bite me and was serious, I would have been in real trouble.

I'll save those pictures for another thread.

I want to focus on Sauzo's beautiful retic here, and recommend them to other EXPERIENCED keepers.

Yep they settle in quickly, and the few times River has gotten defensive with me, she's flattened her head out like a ratsnake and tensed up. Obviously her head is a bit meatier than a ratsnake's, so it just looks like a flattened marshmallow. haha The worst reaction was lifting the front half of her body and moving sideways with her head in the air, head flattened, and puffed up with air, striking if I moved. No hissing, and she quickly calmed down. Her teeth aren't too bad, but that was when she was 4' and under, I'd put the bite under a BRB of similar size.

Although they give you warnings, they are much easier to spook than other snakes, she did this because I left her alone too long outside without touching her. I gotta maintain contact at all times if I let her roam on her own, and had a few other retic/Burm keepers say the same things. With my other snakes, I can let them roam on their own as long as I want without them getting too upset by it (excluding the garters because I'd never see them again). The other time I remember was because I popped the lid off her weighing container. The vibrations scared her, but it was just a quick nip and over with.

Also yesss Sauzo, I need to get a Herpstat 6, but after spending 2 grand on my breeding pair of boas altogether, I'll have to wait to get one for a couple paychecks. I'd love to have all/most of my collection of pulse-proportional and dimming.