Ok I got a better thermo. Temps are great because mine was on the cool side, it is around 90 on the hot side. Humidity is perfect, it's hard to mess up the humidity in southern Florida. I am not going to move him to a smaller tank, he was in a larger tank in the store by himself and was eating every 7 days. I have no doubt he would eat right now if I offered live.

As for the last post, I bought him at PetCo at the recommendation of two friends who own adult (very healthy) snakes. I will NEVER buy from them again. He had mites 24 hours after I got him home, we treated at home and that didn't work, he ended up having to stay at the vet for two weeks. They said they had been treating him for mites prior to sale, they did not tell us that when we bought him.

I do have his feeding history, assuming they were honest and he did poop a few days later and he just had a good clean shed so I am going to assume that part is ok.

He is NOT refusing to eat. He will eat anytime he is offered a live mouse. He ate frozen at the store up until the point he had mites then he refused frozen but at live just fine. They fed him twice while he was with the vet office at PetCo, I was told the mite treatment is highly stressful and this is not unusual. The problem is I want him to eat frozen.

My plan is to get a smaller frozen mouse, this mouse weighs 22 grams. I have read he should eat a hopper that would be around 10 grams. I will be going to a reptile store later today and getting him an appropriately sized frozen mouse. If that doesn't work we will go to live. The snake might be finding a new home when my husband goes to Iraq if he has to eat live, we'll see.

At what point can you handle them daily? Our friends who have ball pythons have them out every night. I see no point in even having him if we can't handle him. If he does eat a live mouse (or even a better sized frozen) I will assume he is just fine with being handled. The kids do stand around his aquarium (the 2 and 4 year old do at least) but I can't see a way of stopping that. I never thought of it as a problem because we have a friend who has 4-5 snakes and she has her kids all over those snakes.

I guess I am off to mouse shop. On a side note, I really hate that my family purchased this animal that I want little to do with and you can see who is stuck doing the dirty work! LOL! :-(

This is is home and then one of him with the mouse (f/t) we offered last night, it just looks way too big to me. The plantation shudder that is open behind his tank is not normally open, I opened it only for better light for the photo. He is by his water dish in this picture, yesterday is the first day he has ever done that. The last one is of him in his feeding tank with the mouse I talked about yesterday. I swear to God the snake gave me an evil glare when we offered this dead mouse. He actually slithered right over as if to let us know just how unacceptalbe this dead mouse was.