Eve - Cape african house snake

[albertagirl]

Tomorrow morning I get to go pick up my new AHS. She'll be my first non-corn, and I can't wait! She gets her name from her birthday, she was born on Christmas eve... and also it's a little tongue in cheek reference to the Adam and Eve and the serpent story. Plus it's just a pretty name.

I don't know how much of a progression an AHS needs, I don't think they change a whole lot, so this may not be updated much. But here are the pictures of her parents and a picture of her as sent to me by the breeder. Cheers!

Mom

Dad (albino)

Eve

 

[albertagirl]

Eve is even prettier in person... and she is definitely *not* a corn snake! What a spaz! LOL. Poor girl nearly escaped. I'll need to be very careful with her until she calms down a little. But for now, a few days to settle in before that work starts. I did manage to get a weight on her, she is 15g.

 

[DollysMom]

Congrats. My son has an Afircan House Snake (not Cape). He's had Norm since 2002 and that snake is the inspiration for my getting my corn snake. So I have warm fuzzy feelings towards AHS.

Eve is lovely. How big (about) will she get? I know there is a size dimorphism in AHS that we don't have in corns.

 

[albertagirl]

Thank you! I believe the females get between 3 and 4 feet.

I'm just hoping it only takes her a few weeks to calm down like my corns did. I know 2002 was a long time ago, but do you remember how long your son's took to be less... um... popcorn-ish? Haha

 

[DollysMom]

I think Norm was always pretty mellow, but as you know, they all have distinct personalities. Lol, you know the routine. Gentle, patient, etc...

 

[albertagirl]

Yup they sure do! Well her middle name might end up being jiffy-pop, but hopefully the usual routine works on her as well as it did on the others. All my research indicates that it should.

 

[DollysMom]

Yup they sure do! Well her middle name might end up being jiffy-pop, but hopefully the usual routine works on her as well as it did on the others. All my research indicates that it should.

Best wishes. No doubt your patient care will work. Lol, on the jiffy-pop. She must be a little firecracker!

I'm so looking forward to seeing her progress!

 

[albertagirl]

Not a corn snake!

Well, african house snakes are NOT corn snakes. All my research made them sound like corn snakes, docile, not bitey, a little flighty/nippy as babies but grow out of it quickly... etc. Yet my little 7 month old is not only extremely flighty and defensive, but about 20 times faster than a corn snake. Literally faster than my eyes can even follow. Possibly the speed of light. (Yes, I know that last one was an exaggeration :laugh. She's fast. And bouncy. She bounced/jumped from the substrate to the TOP of the sliding lid when I opened it. That's a 10 inch jump! Had she bounced again before I caught her, she would have been long gone. I never would have caught her.

She also has much bigger teeth. A corn snake hatchling bite feels like velcro. A house snake hatchling bite feels like needles. It's gonna take a while to tame this one down I think. But now that she's settled in, I can get started.

That's the bad news. The good news is she has not musked me (yet), and she had her first meal with me today. I stuffed her mouse full of sugar to make her sweeter. (kidding) And she's as pretty as she is insane, so once she calms down she is going to be awesome!

 

[DollysMom]

I knew their teeth were longer, from study, not experience. She does sound like a firecracker! Corns are so mellow that even the flighty ones are undoubtedly calm by comparison. Like I said, Norm is really laid back. Maybe it's just him, or he is a different species of AHS, or maybe it's that the males are more laid back? Anyway, glad she ate. I have every faith in your abilities to handle her.

 

[albertagirl]

I just keep reminding myself that Meridian (my ghost stripe corn) was a wild child too. He never bit, mind you, but he was so flighty he was basically suicidal and it was really stressful to handle him at first. But it only took a few weeks before he slowed down and stopped making me almost poo myself every time I took him out. (Little musking joke there for ya. Too much? Haha) So I'm sure in a month or two I'll look back and this and say "that wasn't so bad". My biggest fear is that I'll lose her. As long as that doesn't happen, we'll be fine.

 

[DollysMom]

Lol on the musking joke. Hey a lot of snake parenting is what goes in and what comes out.

I hear you on the fear of loss. I think we all have a healthy fear of that.

I also think they purposely fake us out. Tonight I was doing some touch up work on viv cleaning snake in. Dolly, of course, decided he would rather be snake out. He was halfway (half his body length) up the room wall behind the viv just that fast. I have never seen him try anything like that before so I had a false sense of security. Lil fake out snake, lol.

 

[Gina Hyena]

Gorgeous AHS you have there! I've always admired the eyes, colors, and overall look of this species. Good luck with your wild one!

 

[albertagirl]

Gorgeous AHS you have there! I've always admired the eyes, colors, and overall look of this species. Good luck with your wild one!

Thank you. I love her eyes too!
I was thinking, her progression thread will be less of a progression of her appearance, and more of a progression of her taming process.

 

[albertagirl]

Success!!!

I'm smiling like a fool right now, I finally got to hold my little house snake!

We had progressed to the point where every time I managed to pick her up she would curl up into a ball (my very own miniature ball python!) and sit in my palm like that and not move. But I had to keep my hand inside her cage because she's so fast and jumpy, I was just so scared to lose her! But that meant that there was something to crawl away onto within a couple of inches in every direction, so as soon as she moved, she was off my hands and fleeing.

So I made a "play pen". :laugh: Really more of a catch box. Big enough that I could hold her over/inside of it, and the nearest surface was still too far away for her to reach for it, so unless she really panicked, the only thing for her to climb around on were my hands. But if she did freak out and get away, she had some aspen to break her fall, and then hide in, and no way to escape. So I held her over the box, and slowly encouraged her to move around until finally she was sliding around on my hands, totally calmly exploring, while I restrained myself from jumping up and down. I was a little worried that she was the exception that proved the rule about the nice calm docile non-biting snakes that I keep reading about. I even bought the only book I could find on house snakes, and it also said baby house snakes were far LESS likely to bite defensively than corn snakes!! What??

She actually hasn't tried to bite me since the first couple of times I tried to handle her, and even when she did get a little stressed after exploring for a bit, all she did was curl back up into a ball and stop moving. I might actually have a nice little snake after all! Hooray!! :cheers:

 

[IrishInIsengard]

Congrats! It's hard to break the nervous-cycle (snake's nervous, then you get nervous, then the snake gets more nervous...). It's good to have some calm moments to prove you're not completely evil I really like the idea of the catching box. Very clever.

 

[albertagirl]

Congrats! It's hard to break the nervous-cycle (snake's nervous, then you get nervous, then the snake gets more nervous...). It's good to have some calm moments to prove you're not completely evil I really like the idea of the catching box. Very clever.

Thank you! (Takes a bow) I love the box, it will be sticking around for a while!

It's amazing how my brain works. The first time she bit me, I didn't see it happen (my hand blocked my view), and it took me a second to even realize what had happened. It didn't hurt, and was such a minor thing. Yet if I can *see* her strike or do her herky-jerky thing, I jump a mile! I wish I didn't, but it happens so fast it's over and I'm pumped full of adrenaline before I can stop it. I wish I could sit my brain down and explain that this little snake can't hurt me, and it can stop freaking out every time the snake does!

 

[albertagirl]

AHS vs Corn snakes...

I took a little video of me holding Eve over her "catch box" that I made, but I don't actually know how to post videos here. ???

Now that we've both calmed down enough to stop and smell the roses, I feel like she feels different from a corn snake. Softer somehow, I think maybe, though I haven't really put my finger on it yet. She also keeps different office hours. She's up later than the corns, most of the night it seems. Um... speaking of smelling the roses, I'm also pretty sure she smells different... or smells more?

I filmed her eating today. It feels like watching a corn snake eat in fast motion. Everything house snakes do is faster than corns! Little cheetah snakes!

They are also significantly better at constricting. :laugh: Corn snakes seem to be tied up in knots, and it looks like they might cut off their own circulation at the same time. Here is a comparison of every corn snake constriction I've seen so far which all looked approximately like this:

It's very cute, but not sure how effective? Compare that to Eve's constriction skills, which every time so far has been 3 perfect coils, like this:

All in all, she's turning out to be fascinatingly different from corn snakes, much more so than expected, but really enjoyable. I am really happy with her, and so glad that I took the leap to a new species. I can't wait to see what other suprises she has in store for me!

 

[albertagirl]

Time for some updates! I've been away from the forum, but still loving on my snakes. I'm so excited to come back and find more members with house snakes!

Eve is 16 months old now, and just cracked 100 grams at 2'3". She is currently one of my favorites. Compared to the corn snakes she feels rounder, stronger, and somehow softer. She is also faster, jumps straight up into the air (which I've never seen the corns do) and seems somehow smarter? She seems like she thinks about things. I am probably anthropomorphising on that one, but I'm okay with that. She's also so iridescent I call her my miniature rainbow boa. I think she is the prettiest little thing.

She likes a little more heat than the corns, and I've discovered that if I want her to shed on her own she needs at least 70% humidity in her cage at time of shed. Needless to say, we have had a few bonding moments where I have had to help her shed because she only managed to get half of it off. It always amazes me how well she does with that.

Anyway, time for the best part... pictures! These pictures are from January. She's grown quite a bit since then, but she's so fast and always comes straight for the camera, so taking pictures of her myself are usually... less than awesome.



When I take pictures they are usually headless or blurry. So these pictures are more recent, and show her current size... but they suck. Sorry.

 

[albertagirl]

A friend of mine bought me a stuffed cobra, and Eve thinks it is the best hide ever. She curls up under it and then pokes her head out every couple of minutes to check that I'm still there. It is the cutest thing!

 

[DollysMom]

I find it difficult to get pics of Clyde's head. Yes they do stretch up, really really far. And to top it Clyde stretches and then climbs right up over my phone changing the settings on the touch screen, lol!

Eve is beautiful. I'm glad you got one of Tavia's (Charis's) babies. So many months later I had forgotten that or it went right past me. When you got Eve a house snake didn't seem to be in my future. Our little ones seem to have different parents, though. Clyde's parents are Ukaih and Indigo.

Anyway I'm so glad to see Eve growing so well. She's stunning. It's hard to capture the irredescence in photos but I see it all the time in person. Clyde is 38 grams, up from 8 grams when I got him but at 9 months we have a long way to get to 16 months! Does Eve grip your fingers really tight? I have had Clyde in both hands gripping my fingers so tight it is like being handcuffed, lol!

Don't give up on the pictures. Is usually get one usable one every time I try! Then I give up and I just let him "play".

Clarification. I just looked back and I read Cheers as Charis. I think we had different breeders after all.