Nim the Bredli

[Gobuchul]

Nim has been coming out of his enclosure whenever I'm up late enough to let him. He sits on the edge and checks me out, but doesn't usually climb out onto other things.




He's about 6ft long now, so it's time for an enclosure extension. I could add another 4' to the length, but I'll get more space efficiency in my room if I instead add a vertical 2x2x4 to make an L shape of this enclosure. Then the external space taken including the bp's enclosure is just a 6x2x4, and Nim gets a more vertical area to climb while also getting a length extension to 6'. The pieces for this could also be reconfigured into a horizontal L shape that provides all 8' of floor space.

Nim's enclosure has a half screen on top (useful now in humid Iowa summer,) but this means the bp enclosure can't easily stack on top of his 4x2x2 section. The easiest way to handle this is to keep Nim on top and make the vertical part of the L descend down from his main floor. However, my intuition is that he'd prefer climbing up a chimney rather than down a pit. To make this happen, I'd have to put his enclosure on the bottom either by ordering a non-screen top, covering the screen top and using it for the bp, or messing up the alignment of everything by building a spacer between the vertical-stacked enclosures.

After writing it out, I think the best approach is to make it a pit to start. I'll fill it with rope to climb (maybe including a larger vertical one, I've wanted to see him climb vertically), add some shelves, and put a hide at the bottom. If he never uses it, I can reconfigure into either a chimney or a horizontal extension. Cleaning the pit will probably be a little less convenient than a chimney or a horizontal extension, but shouldn't be terrible since I can put a door at the bottom.

I'm open to suggestions regarding the heat/light gradient between the flat part and the pit. I'm planning to just put the heat panel on the same side of the 4x2x2 as the pit, and leave it otherwise unheated and dark. Room temp is 78 now because my former roommate hooked me on using minimal AC, but probably drops to 69-72 after my move.

I move in two months and it'll take 6-8 weeks to get the extensions anyways, so Nim will have to suffer the 4x2x2 for a little while longer. Cause for me to stay up late, let him out, and write things like this I guess.