Stop pushing!!

[Team Slytherin]

I want to preference that I'm newer to snakes so I might not have the best advice and someone here might have better. However I have worked with animals that have zoonotic disorders which to me this sounds similar. Now hear me out first. When I worked at a zoo, we had bobcats that were coming into puberty. They would often pace and pace because they were frustrated. With cats, they hunt by smell and sight, so a lot of times if we put toys with new smells on the toys, the cats would stop pacing for a while. Or if we were short on time if we just rearranged their furniture they typically would stop and pay attention to that.

So I guess what I'm suggesting is have you given him things to keep him distracted? Like when you put him in a new enclosure and he stopped for a while. He was probably searching the enclosure and wanting to know more about it so that kept him busy. So maybe rearranging his branches every so often would help. Even maybe having a snake jungle gym that's outside the enclosure that you can put him on for like an hour. That's for you to hopefully tire him out before you put him back in his enclosure. Do this right before the time he usually starts banging.

Now like I said I'm newer to snakes and snake behavior but I'm just trying to think of something that possibly could help.

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No need to qualify that you are new - your instincts are very good! 😁 There is definitely something psychologically unusual going on; it’s just difficult to decipher because he can’t speak English! I do regularly bring him new plants, leaves, roots when I go out adventuring. His branches cannot be moved because they are mounted, but I will regularly add to them. He’s been in this enclosure only a month, so he hopefully isn’t getting TOO bored. We practice choice based handling, so he does know if he comes down to the glass, chances are, I’ll let him out to play.

It used to be easy to let him out to climb on my walls of art, but he has just gotten so big that he just knocks everything over! I’m trying to figure out some good enrichment ideas that can accommodate a snake of his size and athleticism. It’s a tough feat in an LA apartment🤣🤣 He’s 8 feet of extreme intelligence with an ultra-prehensile tail that always wants to grab something…. He is also constantly singing to himself (or me; it’s often difficult to tell)…Apophis has always been an interesting cat, but his current neuroses are definitely causing some concern. He’s been burrowing under his water bowl to escape - which is VERY unusual behavior for an arboreal snake. He’s getting a mouth full of soil every time because he thinks he might be able to get behind the foam background to hide, like he could in his old enclosure. News flash, I built it specifically to prevent him from doing that!