Letting Pete explore

Hey guys, love this board. I just spent an hour looking through everyone's pix! It's pretty addicting.

I saw quite a few pix of snakes outdoors on the grass and just chilling in living rooms, etc. Is it pretty safe to let your snake do this at any point in time, or is it better for some reason to wait until they're older; maybe then they're calmer? My main concern is him getting away and me having to dig him out of some new hiding spot he finds. Pete escaped from my hand the other day and ended up on the floor, and he was booking it under the end table when I caught him. Or is it more of temperament thing? Pete is really active when held, and just seems to want to explore non-stop.

I would never let a hatchling loose, when I take pics I always have one hand the tail, they are just too fast. Outside there is the danger of birds seeing them as prey. Even the bigger ones I'm pretty causious. Inside never, have three cats.
There have been people on the forum who have lost a snake in the dash board of the car, down heater vents... susang

The little ones are remarkably quick and unpredictable. Combine that with any corn snake's ability to squeeze into spaces that you would never imagine they could. Larger ones are probably just as fast ad the hatchlings, but there's so much more of it to grab hold of to keep from going where you can't retrieve it.

Some are just more active when held than others. Some are "I'm outta here" and other's are "I'm chillin" when I hold them. But I don't think for a second that any of 'em wont make a run for it if I took my eyes off of them.

Well, a snake can't outrun you. Any snake, besides Addy, when taken outside, has always moved slowly and cautiously. I am more afraid to set a snake down on carpet where it could get under something, down a heat vent, who knows what than on an open expanse of grass. It's really nice if you have a small tree to put the snake in for photographing it. Again, in my experience, the snake explores slowly and carefully rather than bolting to the top of the tree or the ground. Of course, always keep it in reach, watch for birds, don't look away for a second.

Here's a super-lame video of Maizey going for a walk. My old camera always wanted to auto focus on the grass, not the snake. But you get the idea...

Here's my snake that _will_ run. Although it was bad for my "movie," I could easily keep up with her.

I saw this National Geographic special about how cornsnakes hunted birds, and how birds protected themselves. The cornsnake was climbing a pine to get to a nest (hole in the tree) of a red-cockaded woodpecker. The woodpecker saw the snake and started pecking the bark around the entrance to its nest, causing sap to drip and run down the trunk. As soon as the snake touched the sap, it dropped off the tree. (Pretty far, like 50 feet!) So I took Maizey out to see how he was at climbing a pine.

Here's a guy that just wants to get down to the ground! Mr. Zee:



(You can see me spotting him near the end, even!)

When my hatchling gets older i'll let it out in the garden living room etc..... But shes far too active far too curious for me to do that heh and pete is a cool name for a snake mine is called bell but i call her bellamy don't tell me why lol .

Great vid of maize climbing the tree nanci! That quite suprised me actually!

That's the tree I found him under, originally. The tree climbing was a cool experiment- Maizey knew exactly how to do it (no duh).

I like the Maizey vids, he's quite a good-lookin snake