Enter Quetzalcoatl!

It was a cold, blistery Tuesday morning in January. I awoke bright and early, eager with anticipation, and made my way to the main office of my apartment complex. "Jackie?" I said. "If a package arrives for me, can you call me on my cellphone right away? I'm waiting for a baby snake." "A snake?! Well... of course we'll let you know right away!" I returned to my apartment and waited... and waited... time seemed to drag.

Finally, at around 10:00 a.m. the phone rang. My baby had arrived! My heart pounded in my chest as I ran down to the office to retrieve the tiny package. The box was marked "Perishable" (I'll say!) and had all sorts of arrows and care warnings all over it. I rushed it up to my apartment, carefully cut the box open, pried up the Styrofoam insulation, and dug through crumpled up newspaper to find the tiny cloth bag that held the precious snakeling inside.

I slowly opened the bag and peered inside to see two beautiful red eyes looking back at me. His tiny pink tongue flicked as he sat virtually motionless for several minutes before the tiny albino stretched his head up to look out of the bag he had traveled in. He was absolutely gorgeous! Pictures had not done him any justice at all.

As I was placing him into his enclosure, I felt his stomach was empty and hollow as if he hadn't eaten in a long time and his tummy gurgled as he slithered from my hands. He hadn't been in his enclosure for more than 10 minutes when he started hissing at me and mouth-displaying.

Despite what many people had told me about giving a new snake a break-in period before attempting to feed it, my new baby, Quetzalcoatl seemed very hungry (I figured that one of the main reasons he was grumpy, besides not knowing me, was that he hadn't been fed). I thawed him out a rat pup and offered it to him. He took it instantly! Bitten and constricted! He sucked that thing down like a kid eating gummy bears.

When he was finishing swallowing, I noticed that a piece of his substrate had gotten into his mouth. I was afraid he might ingest it, so I used a pair of chopsticks to pick the piece of wood from his mouth as he yawned to realign his jaw. It was probably a bad mood, because he was instantly angry with me. He hissed and struck at me a couple of times before I closed his tub for the night.

Over time, I sat next to Quetzalcoatl's cage and occasionally stroked him while he hissed angrily at me. I did this several times a day, every day until he had fully calmed down because I did not want him to learn that a little bit of moodiness would get him his way. Over the two weeks Quetzalcoatl transformed from a scared, vocal, and seemingly aggressive snakeling to probably one of the most tame, docile, and lovable snakes I have ever met.

(Photos: First: Quetzalcoatl in his bag in the lap of one of my dolls, Second & Third: Quetzalcoatl in his new enclosure