Congrats Robin and Deborah. Yes, all of our ASF's are pretty friendly, and most of the ones we have are relatively calm. I don't know what happened with Ed getting bit. I guess he scared one. As for gestation, I am not sure, but I believe it to be slightly longer than a regular rat. Don't worry about that too much, just know that if you blink your eyes, you'll have ASF's taking over. They reproduce like there's no tomorrow. I promise. Good luck to you guys. I love these things. We don't feed them to too many snakes, but the ones that we do, have put on great weight (most were very horrible feeders).