If I might jump in with sumthin that some one else (I believe it was Adam) had suggested before. If you are going to stay with the 40 gallon tank, even though you think that newspaper is tacky, you could easily save your snake a ton of stress by crumpling up a bunch of pieces of newspaper & laying them all over the floor of the tank. This way your snake will not feel unsecure about moving from one hide to the next because of the open space. It will feel as though it can cruise through the "brush" or in this case newspapers, to stay incognito from any lurking prey while movin from one hide to the next.