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?