Hi, everyone.
This thread I am starting is better suited for the Pets Forum than the Tropical Gardening or Florida Gardening Forums where I had originally posted it. I just discovered the Pets Forum. So, here goes.
Fourteen months ago, a friend living with us bought a hatchling ball python from a pet store in a neighboring town. I was with him at the time. The poor snake had been kept in an air-conditionned area without a heat lamp, a place to hide or even a water bowl. It was cold, hungry, dehydrated and malnourished. The way I see it, she was destined to that great pet shop in the sky, had my friend not bought her. Truly, she was at death's door. Pet shops who know nothing about snakes should not sell them! Don't get me started on that.
Anyhow, we brought that pitiful 12-inch snake home and we proceeded to dote upon her. First order of business: food and water. She was then given her own 10-gallon aquarium with a generous substrate of wood shavings, her very own water bowl, a place to hide and Oh what luxury: a heat lamp. A few days later, we gave her a bath to loosen the previous shed skin that still clung to her. My wife and I were not snake people, but Lucy quickly endeared herself to both of us. I decreed that Lucy had to be taken out of her habitat and be handled every day, which is not hard to take.
Well, Lucy is now 3 feet long, lives in a 50-gallon aquarium complete with her own PVC pipe jungle gym. She truly has become our baby. She spends hours on end hanging around our neck, sometimes wrapping all the way around (and then some), but she never constricts. She just hangs on.
I realize that snakes are not everyone's cup of tea. Hey, it we were not too enthused when Lucy got here but we are animal lovers and now, we wouldn't trade Lucy for all the tea and China.
Take care, everyone.
Sylvain.
