Snakes and Stones

[Lord Sorril]

New England Reptile Expo 05 MAY 2024

The LED lighting still wreaks havoc on my automatic camera focus, and attempting to tinker with my camera focus draws the attention of an over-enthusiastic crowd to elbow me out of the way before I can recalibrate.
I wasn't really paying attention to the ball pythons as I was helping my gf try and find a high red ornate frog (we did not).
























For my mother I bought: A Jewel Orchid, a Purple Passion plant, and a Rex Begonia.
My gf bought: Hornworms, Magnolia Leaves, and fresh Reptile Calcium.

[Bogertophis]

Oooh, I want that Taiwan Beauty rat snake! Looks a lot like the ones I had, only mine had a bolder pattern of black diamonds. The hypo does nothing for me- I like the normal coloration. Now those are snakes that I'm sure would fish things out of a water bowl... Pity I never thought about testing it when I had them. Such alert, fun snakes, but they get SO big. Mine weren't biters, just restless, not good at sitting still- & beautiful! Love those eyes. And boy do they EAT!

I like the bold colors on that scaleless rat snake too, but I wouldn't want one- I likes my snakes with scales. (He should be cheaper too, since he's missing some "equipment"? )

Hey, thanks for sharing with the rest of us poor souls here that don't get out much to these things.

[Lord Sorril]

Hey, thanks for sharing with the rest of us poor souls here that don't get out much to these things.

Yeah, I don't get out as much as I used to either. I think I missed the previous 2 New England Reptile Expos after missing none for many years.

Photo #343

Low Expression Orange Dream/Het Clown with a tumbled ThunderEgg.
Note: The brown parts of the thunderegg are soft rhyolite and the opaque is a hardened agate core which makes tumbling a larger piece without it fracturing-tricky business.

[Bogertophis]

Wow! ^ ^ ^ Beautiful snake AND stone! I know we're not seeing your "goofs" here, but you're still quite an excellent rock tumbler. ("rumbler"?) ("lapidist"?) Very patient too-

[Lord Sorril]

Wow! ^ ^ ^ Beautiful snake AND stone! I know we're not seeing your "goofs" here, but you're still quite an excellent rock tumbler. ("rumbler"?) ("lapidist"?) Very patient too-

Hahaha Thanks! I am an expert with rock tumblers only because I have a lot of them and I have been doing it for several years. I wouldn't consider myself any sort of lapidary pro unless I had all the toys and had mastered them (rock saws, angle grinders, flat lap polishers, cabbing machines/grinding wheels etc etc). My parents offered to buy all the fancy machines for me to advance my rock tumbling hobby to lapidary work, but, my main hobby is breeding ball pythons...everything else is just a secondary interest.

Yeah, you don't see goofs because the great thing about rock tumbling is that you can just toss them back in the barrel and aside from internal fracturing: any mistakes can be corrected at the cost of losing mass on the stone...
One of my costliest goofs was using a beautiful 468g. Red-Blue Corundum (Ruby/Sapphire) I imported from a mine in China. I put in a tumbling barrel with petrified wood chips: My thought was that since the Corundum was harder than the petrified wood-and the same hardness as my silicon carbide grit-that it should wear down very slowly. This would have been true, but, the higher hardness stones don't scratch-they splinter and chip. At the end of two weeks of tumbling I had a 20g sphere of ugly grey-blue sapphire and everything else in the barrel was liquified by the corundum dust...they say not to tumble Rubies and Sapphires-'they' are right...

Photo #344

Lesser (+Het Gravel or YB), and a piece of pink chalcedony from the West Coast, USA.

[Bogertophis]

Ouch on the Red-Blue Corundum...but we all live & learn.

[Lord Sorril]

Photo #345

Black agate from Madagascar with a Pastel/Orange Dream/Het Clown ball python.

[Lord Sorril]

Oh, and 9 eggs for clutch #9 yesterday-how fitting...

[Lord Sorril]

Photo #346

A chunk of snowflake obsidian with a Hypomelanistic BP (+Het VPI Axanthic).
Fun fact: The 'snowflakes' are called spherulites and are composed of a type of quartz (cristobolite), and the small red spots commonly seen are usually hematite inclusions.

Breeders Note: 2024 seasons is going great!
I had to bring the entirety of my incubators online. This has never happened previously and as I was setting them up I found that my gf had scavenged some of my thermostats over the last 2 years for her terrariums (without telling me).
Luckily I keep a small hidden stash of spare VE-200s (just in case).

Regardless of my good production this year-there were five bp females I really wanted eggs from this season-and four of them reabsorbed, and I'm uncertain on the fifth. Figures right?

[Lord Sorril]

So, it did not take long for someone to debate my claim that Photo #346 is a Hypo...so for reference:

1. Sheds clear/Patternless
2. Parental Cross was Pastel/VPI Axanthic/Het Hypo x Hypo.
3. Dark Eyes (Not Green/Blue)
4. Color Comparison to 'WT' below: