The best way to change a snake's attitude is to change yours.
What I mean is that he is feeling your lack of confidence, and it's scaring him. You aren't communicating to him that he's safe with you...instead you're
convincing him that he has something to fear. You say that now you are 'super-scared of this guy now' but why? Is this your first snake? Maybe it's just
not meant to be... I mean, no one has ever died from a ball python bite, I promise you. A bite isn't pleasant but most are avoidable if you can manage to
have more empathy with how frightened your snake is of YOU.
Also, you are feeding live...and that alone can make a snake far more "pumped up" & likely to nip. You say he is 3 years old...so he should NOT be eating
every week...but it's also possible that he's being under-fed & is hungry for larger prey. Imagine if you never had lunch or dinner, but only snacks.
The time he was climbing on the edges of his cage (after spilling his water bowl)...he felt very vulnerable being out in the open like that...many snakes that
are perfectly calm with handling may react in a similar way if you put them on the ground, then come back to scoop them up. Snakes do NOT see well, and
they don't generally recognize us visually, so once you let go of them & aren't close enough to identify by scent, they get fearful that we are an approaching
predator rather than the human they already know. They know us best by our touch & scent. They use their heat sensing pits to detect both prey & predators,
but that won't tell them which one.
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