RUN!!!!!!!!!

[Snakebite001]

I have this problem.....well not a problem a wondering..
how can i stop my baby corn *bless him* from bolting so fast around across my hand ...!
by the way i did wash my hand when i handled him so i cant see wot the problem is!
is it because he is young and needs to get his energy out???

ALL replys will be read!!

Lizzy and sidney
xxx:rolleyes:

[Jimmy C.]

Hi,
Is he very young? And how often do you handle him? I think that he is scared for his life. Give him time to get accustomed to you, that way he wont think that you are going to eat him .
Jimmy

[CornsnakeKeeper]

He is young and frightened. He will calm with age.

If you don't have it,
buy the Corn Snake Manual
Written By: Bill and Kathy Love

it will tell you everything you need to know about your corn

[ERJ]

I have found that it is always better to buy young snakes so that they can get used to you and you to them over time. It's really a bonus when hes frightened because then you know he's not as tame as he could be (an adult can't get used to handling as quickly if it hasn't been handled before). So just handle him once a day and never stop "touching* him :p as if he if crawing on your hand and you sudenly touch say his tail then he would bolt or get defensive. REGULAR handling is all you need.
ERJ

[lynn]

Regular handling but not too much as this can stress a young snake. Maybe 5 min's at a time to start with. He will get used to you in time.

[g_vanzyl]

a snake is a snake, not a pet like a cat.

i believe a snake does not like being handled. respect it for what it is.

if you want something you can caress every day because of the humen desire for contact, pet a baboon or better yet, a human. i mean to say that if you want to touch, touch something that wants to be touched.

[ERJ]

I don't agree because i've read that snakes (especially when young) can attemp to seach for you for interaction and food. anyway i'm sure if you left a corn in its cage ALL it's life it would be bad for it in that it would grow fat and not see anything apart from the insides of its cage. I'm not sure a baboon always likes to be petted either.
ERJ

[g_vanzyl]

to ERJ

THIS PROVES THAT YOU SHOULD NOT BELIEVE EVERYTHING THAT YOU READ.

propaganda and political philosophy is also written. have you heard (or read) of a juvenile bonding with a pinky mouse, an eagle or even it's mother? why would it bond to you...except with the help of fly paper?

to the snake you have the relative size of a tall building. do not take the length of the snake but look at it's height. the snake is looking at you from the ground upwards. go lie on the ground and look up to people. it must be intimidating. it is for the snake.

lots of love and happiness.

[ERJ]

I agree that the thing i read was most likely to be wrong but surely you should give the snakes some exercise for health reasons and if a snake was THAT much agaisnt being handled then it would never get more used to it.

[Colleen]

I don't know that I aggree with you. I have been lightly stroking our snake and he comes out of his hide and rubs himself against my hand. And when we hold him with fingers spread he will weave in and out the whole way. We have only had him 3 weeks and he lets us know when he has had enough! Maybe ours is strange!:D But I think that every animal likes touch that feels good. If they truely hated being held and touched then I'm sure they would let us know ...bite ...bolt...fight....ect.

Give your snake time to learn that you are NOT going to hurt it, and when you see it moving around it's cage slowly put your hand in and let him come explore you. Thats what worked for me anyway.


Just my opinion anyway:cool:

Colleen

[louis]

Hey g_vanwhateveryournameis, are you some sorta ghandi-snakeman? Do you work with the humane society? Do you own a snake? Do you know anything about snakes if you don't own one? I don't think my snakes hated being handled at all. If anything, they liked it because they could see a window of opertunety for escape. They really are great snakes that everyone likes because they CAN be handled. If we didn't want to handle them we would buy some gaboon viper or a inland taipan, or indian python, or edb rattler.......

[reaper]

g-vanzyl

yeah do you have a snake i have two and they both injoy being handled in fact reaper the one i have had longer comes to me when i put my hand in viv think he likes being held and he feels safe. But at the end of the day if you do keep snakes it up to you we all have are own veiws

[absolutneil]

Of course it is a bit strong to say love, but my corns deffinitely enjoy the interaction. All but one of my seven corns comes out of his hide when I come into the room. Then I often place my hand in one of their containers and leave it there for a moment. Before you know it I have a snake in my hand.

I completely disagree that all snakes want to be left alone. Their are the individuals (i have one) that couldn't care less but this is true with cats or dogs.

g_vanzyl isn't going to make too many friends spouting things like that about snakes here! Does he/she own one? what kind of interaction has he had with snakes? cornsnakes?

Take it from the people here who own these snakes: these are gentle, social animals and are great pets.

Baboons on the other hand are horrible pets. Anything that hurls it's feces through the air is not a nice animal. Not to mention the tendancy that baboons have toward biting...

[ERJ]

Unlucky g_vanzyl but i think you've been proven wrong, maybe you should post a poll!:p

[Celeste]

Ermm....This is just my opinion, but I would think that any creature that willingly puts himself in his owner's hand is pretty much attention-craving, or at least docile enough to enjoy handling....My own female simply adores being held! As for the "intimidating" part, yeah, I geuss it would be kind of scarey to have a skyscraper swoop down and pick you up...but that's why I put my hand down flat against the bedding. It makes me seem like I'm more on her "level."

[g_vanzyl]

I will accept that the snake becomes “docile enough to allow handling”. “attention craving” is a bit too much. you must also remember that a snake in captivity is not willingly doing anything.
This is only my opinion. ERJ thinks that i have been proven wrong. maybe i know nothing.

what is a “ghandi-snakeman”, louis? ghandi was a peace loving, passive, bald man with bad eyesight. it does not sound like me.
i have a corn snake. 1150mm long. i caught it in january 2001 in someone’s garden in the cape, south africa. it was much smaller and thinner then. imagine my surprise. i had to search the internet to find out what it was.

i have six other local snakes of which two are poisonous. three of them are africa’s alternative to the rat snake. they are brown house snakes. apparently called the dwarf python in the usa, which is stupid. it is also wrong. a dwarf python is something else. i assume it sells better in the usa if it is called a python.

apart from my normal occupation, i am called out to catch snakes that found their way into human residences. due to the urban sprawl in my area, this happens a lot. i therefore deal with wild snakes. they are not captive bred and/or used to humans. you can pick up a wild cobra with your hand if you can persuade it you are a moving tree. it does not like being picked up. It does not feel affection. It just does not feel threatened.

I base my arguments on working with the “snake society”, not the “humane society”. It would be irrelevant.

deon

oh yes, my smily face is winking. he is not half asleep.

[Celeste]

If I offended, I'm sorry:)
Still, my one snake acts in a very affectionate way, if snakes can show affection. She pokes her head out of her hide, and seeing me there, comes up and onto my hand. She always, and I mean ALWAYS sits on the very top of my head. Its like she's looking down on me and yelling, "hee! Look what I can do, mom! No coils, see!" Now, I know that she isn't actually thinking that (she's probably just glad to get out of her cage to go and hunt the world for prey), but she sure is willing in her play-time with me. She isn't just docile enough to let me hold and stroke her - she chooses it by coming up to me. And don't tell me she's just curious about a new object and coming up to investigate it - she has trees in her tank. She can climb any 'ole time she wants, and she just happens to want to climb whenever I put my hand in there? No. She smells me, as a human, and decides for herself that she is going to take her daily slither up to the top of my head. Granted, wild snakes won't act like that. They are just docile enough to be touched, or gently handled. But captive-bred...probably not very snake is like this, but mine just acts like she likes it, that's all. I can't honestly believe that every time she's climbed up me is just a coindidence that she felt like climbing at that moment.
And it's kind of odd that you call the smiley-face a "he" and yet you call snakes "its." (Sorry, I'm a sort of animal-rights activist and I couldn't help but notice that:) Obviously, snakes have genders. It just kinda irks me when people do that, so I mean you no offence:)

[pipatic]

well reading all these messages,i come to one conclusion,
EACH TO THERE OWN, and so long as we are doing the best we
can for are snakes,thats all that matters,
give names, stroke them gentle, feed them, clean them, keep them warm and safe. and you ll build up a bond with yours snakes,
then you will want to learn more about the snakes you keep,but lets not argue over who is right and wrong,
so breed your snakes and leave to wild ones alone,

[g_vanzyl]

our spring is on it's way (or maybe on her way). i will make effort to look for reasons to agree with you.

nobody needs to apologise for differing with me, celeste. my wife does it all the time and hardly ever apologises. i have to apologise for referring to snakes in the third gender and giving an inanimate object like a smiley face a sex. fact is i do not know of what gender any of my snakes are.

pipatic must please explain what she meant by “and leave [the] wild ones alone”.

thank you for the debate. we will do it again.

deon

[pipatic]

well deon ,pipatic is he
leave the wild snakes alone means quite simply ,that there is enough captive bred snakes now ,that we dont need to import or remove from the wild ie royals python etc

[bmm]

If corns in the wild don't seek out humans, and live perfectly fine without human interaction then they can 100% live without being held. Not sure who wrote something to the effect that a corn that is never taken out will be sad. I disagree. That's silly. If you have a nice large tank and stuff then the corn will be FINE if he is never ever touched. Perfectly fine.

But I hold my snakes once in awhile myself, just not as often as most people do. I don't see them liking it one way or another.

But if you are talking about other snakes i.e. say a Ball Python, I can safely say they would prefer not to be out, not all of them but most as it is very stressful especially if they are young ones.
just my thoughts.

handling is fine i think and its fine never to hold your snake

bmm

[Neil]

I know that snakes are naturally solitary animals and I see absolutely no problem with leaving them alone and not handling them. But I also think that it can be enjoyable for both owner and snake, if it is happy with being handled. Maybe some people only handle their snakes to tame them because they don't really want a wild/aggressive snake as a pet (I know corns are very docile anyway).
I think that people's opinions on handling sometimes change with the number of snakes they own. I suppose that a lot of people with only a few snakes or only one regularly handle the animals but large-scale breeders do it less often, if at all. I think it's your choice if you hold them or not. Personally, I handle mine regularly.

Neil

[g_vanzyl]

oeps, pipatic, it seems that i have a big problem (bigger than i thought) with this gender thing.

i regret my blunder.

i agree with your statement. ironically i go around catching wild snakes in people's houses or on their property. i then release them in a safe(er) place. that is how i pay my rent for living on this earth.

[little twiglet]

snakes enjoy being handled but not for long periods of time especially young ones but give him time!!

[g_vanzyl]

just when i thought it was safe to go on the internet...little twiglet (a he or a she) posts a reply.

thank you.

[Corney]

Do you just put your hand in there and pick him up??When Candy(my corn)was young she would bite my hand if I didnt first gently pet her and show her its me.So that may scare your snake so much that he'll do that.

[g_vanzyl]

my corn, when i only had it for a month (wild caught in south africa!), nipped me once.

i cannot recall being bitten by any other snake, caught in the wild or otherwise, that nipped me. except a boomslang/tree snake (dispholidus typus) when i tried to bag it. it caught me with one tooth, the poison fang. as you might know, it is the most poisonous snake in south africa. rather ironic, i think.

interesting comment on geckos. they look like miniature dragons to me. maybe that is why i like my family.

what is the difference between newbie and normal member? what does "newbie" mean?

[SilverTongue]

newbie is just a term for someone who just got their first pet snake and doesnt really know what to do.

This term also applies to anything you or someone else tries for the first or not many times.

[Corney]

Newbie,I still concider myself a newbie.Even though ive been working with reptiles for 3 years,I still have alot more to learn,ALOT!!