Ball python spazzing out during the day

[Craiga 01453]

I'm just gonna throw this out there...

OP, you clearly care very deeply for your snake, and I appreciate and respect that.

However, your methods are extremely unconventional and your experience is limited to a few years with one animal.

Maybe it's time to try keeping him in the more "standard" way that's advised by experienced keepers.

Snakes are not social animals. And I don't mean this as an insult, but you anthropomorphise with the best of them. You love your snake, that's obvious. But I think you often forget the most important thing...he's a snake.

Snakes don't look forward to time outside the enclosure the way you feel Crowley does. They aren't animals that enjoy roaming and cruising all day...that's why BPs aren't photographed and observed just cruising around in nature. They are secretive, solitary and nocturnal.
Your routine of having him out for hours all day is not allowing him to just...be a snake.

And the bird, I'm sorry but that can't possibly be helping the situation. Snakes and other pets don't mix, period. Especially when one is a perfect predator to the other.

So what I'm getting at is, there's a reason us experienced keepers keep our animals the way we do and advise others to do so. It works.

We have years of experience and thousands of animals to have learned from.
And unfortunately, your inexperience shows in how often you anthropomorphize. Snakes are very good at hiding stress and illness. So you may have mistaken signs of stress for signs of affection. You may simply not know what you're looking for. And that's ok because you only have one animal, so what you see may appear "normal", while we may have recognized it as stress.

Sometimes all they need is to be left alone...to be a snake. Even you constantly hovering over the enclosure with a camera and fixing his hide and moving him into his hide...all equal stress.

I'm just being honest here...it may be time to realize that snakes are not social animals and will not thrive when being treated as one. You clearly want more interaction with your pet than your pet is equipped to provide. It might be time to give Crowley a break and let him be a snake.