My love, my snakes

Snakes really are becoming my life. I love everything about them. They amaze me. They are the best pets ever. To be honest, now that I have snakes, it's really hard to own anything else. Even though I love my dog, he's a pain in the butt compared to the snakes. They don't shed hair everywhere, they don't chew up my stuff, they don't really do anything out of spite or maliciousness, they are quiet and are really easy keepers. On top of that, they provide me with all the affection and love a cat would, without the mess or the smell.

Snakes are so much more intelligent than people give them credit for too. They think, feel, have likes and dislikes. I've even seen a snake hold a grudge before and they pick and choose who they like and don't like. They have a great judge of character. Despite what people say, snakes do socially interact with each other. I've witnessed it with my own two eyes.

To be honest, I wish people gave these animals more of a chance. They are unfairly judged. People call them "slimy" and "gross"... snakes, in general, are probably cleaner than your mouth and are far from slimy (except maybe anacondas). They are endearing, affectionate, intelligent creatures, each with their own personalities. They are just severely misunderstood. People who, upon hearing I have snakes, scrunch their faces and declare how "disgusting" it is piss me off. Most of those people have never even been in the same room as a snake.

What people don't seem to understand is that humans are not born with a fear of snakes. They are socialized to have a fear of snakes. People who live in an area where there are more venomous snakes in the wild are raised to have more of a fear of them than people who live in places with more non-venomous snakes. However, what I've noticed is that there are people out there who believe that ALL snakes are venomous. I've even been asked if my boa CONSTRICTORS have been "de-fanged"... or if I'm afraid I'm going to be bitten. If I was afraid my snakes were going to kill me, I wouldn't be walking around with them around my neck! Seriously people, use some logic! There are just a lot of severely misinformed people out there. It makes me sad. These animals don't deserve the bad-rap they've been given.

Feeding Day...

It always impresses me how aware the snakes are of their surroundings... usually. Don't get me wrong, there are some days and times when they can sleep so soundly you can poke and prod them all you want and they will just push you off, cover their eyes, and go back to sleep. But there is one thing that will catch the attention of even the heaviest sleeping snake - feeding day.

At this point I am pretty sure the snakes count the days between regular meals as they seem to have a unified "poo" the day before they get fed. If shedding, many of them seem to try to finish shedding before the scheduled feeding day since we don't feed if the snakes are shedding.

Once, even, we were not planning on feeding Kiseki because he was in shed, but before the last snake got their rat, he was already peeling back his head piece and rushing through his shed. I don't think I've ever seen a snake shed quite so quickly before or since.

I guess I should probably mention that the reason I am blathering about feeding day is because yesterday we fed all of our snakelings.

The snakes usually know something's up because we clean all the cages and check everyone to do a head count before we thaw the rats. If more than one bin opens up in that room, you can guarantee that at least two of the snakes in that room will take notice... Shiva and Quetzalcoatl (although Shiva usually takes notice of people in the room whether it's feeding day or not). Rest assured, Quetzalcoatl's nose pokes out from under his paper and he starts flicking his tongue. It usually isn't long before he's got his nose pressed against the glass and he's watching our every movement... or more specifically Dave's every movement, as Dave is usually the one who brings the rats into the room.

I am always interested to see each snake's feeding behavior, as some of them have very distinct mannerisms. Quetzalcoatl, when hungry, strikes hard but has poor aim. His little albino eyes just don't see very well. When not quite as hungry, or in a particularly lazy mood, he will simply open his mouth and gently take the rat from your hand.

Some of the snakes expect you to just drop the carcass in and go away - like our little Rose. She's not a people snake and she would much rather just eat off the floor of the cage than have a rat dangled for her... and usually Carnival prefers this as well.

Shiva, on the other hand, seems to enjoy the "thrill of the hunt" and you can often find him constructing "caves" out of newspaper inconspicuously (in his opinion) placed next to the water bowl. After all, eventually prey will have to come to get a drink. Last night, he had this such design going for him and it was quite interesting to watch his behavior. We dropped the rat into his cage (we feed frozen thaw so they are already dead) and he sniffed it, grabbed it by the back, and drug it into his newspaper "cave".

At any rate, I guess most people don't realize that snakes all have different feeding behavior. I really need to start taking video of my odd-ball-eaters. :)

It's been a while...

I realize I haven't written in this blog for a couple of years now. Moving and work and life in general has gotten in the way of me keeping up with things. At any rate, I would like to revive this blog. However, I will not be writing much more about my past as a beginner snake keeper except occasional mention where needed.

Instead, I would like to write more about what I have learned, observed, and experienced more recently. After all, my babysnake Shiva is no longer a baby. I have also since probed Shiva myself and discovered that my vet apparently did not know how to properly sex a snake. Shiva, unfortunately, went three years of his life being referred to as a "she". Ironically enough, he acts the most masculine of all my snakes - perhaps to prove to the world that he is in fact a male, despite his past as a "female".

Realistically, he knew the truth all along, it was us stupid humans that had a heck of a time readjusting ourselves from referring to him with "he" instead of "she". As far as his temperament and behavior goes, he hasn't changed in the five years I've had him. Shiva is still a curiosity driven, adventurous snake with a lot of intelligence and ambition. My husband says he is "the dumbest snake we own", but only because Shiva's antics drive him nuts.

Dave hates the fact that Shiva consistently rearranges his cage to suit himself, including, but not limited to balling up all of the newspaper and laying on it, dumping his water bowl so he can lay in a soaking wet cage while shedding, and making paper "caves" for himself. Shiva has also recently taken to "cleaning" his own cage whenever he messes. Before, where it was dropped, there it lay. Now he pushes everything to the hot side of his cage where it can quickly dry out, and therefore not stink up his cage too badly. The downside to this is that we end up spending extra time trying to scrape and scrub the urates and poo that end up being dried to the bottom and corners of the cage.

Despite his antics, I love Shiva to death. He is very gentle and personable; content to rest on my shoulders while I walk around. Shiva still begs to be taken out, often the first one to greet me when I walk into the snake room. He might be a plain old normal, $75 snake to some people, but he is worth the world to me. I wouldn't trade him for anything. Who knew that a snake could be so special?