DuxorW
Derailer of Threads
I have never been a huge fan of ball pythons because the ones I had interacted with just never seemed to do anything. My first non-colubrid was a hypo jungle columbian boa. I wanted a larger snake that was a little more interactive than a ball python, but he thinks he IS a ball python! He is incredibly docile to the point where outside his cage he just sits there like a slug! I can lay him on the bed and clean the room for 30 minutes and he won't have moved an inch. The exception is if I put him around my neck...he'll give me a neck massage, crawl in my hair, and rub the side of his face all over mine for some reason. He was incredibly small for his (supposed) age when I got him so I wondered if he had some kind of underlying issue, but he ate well and grew normally for me. I wouldn't trade him for anything in the world, but rather than get another boa to meet my desire for a larger active snake (I haven't been brave enough to make the retic plunge), I went ahead and got a ball python. There aren't many morphs i'm interested in, and even though I'm not a big fan of earth tones on snakes I think the normal ball pythons looks better than most of the morphs! The exceptions for me are blue eyed leucistics and the albino combos. I've always followed Ben Siegel's reptile auctions but was too skeptical to buy anything. But once I saw an albino spider that looked like it would go for much less than market value, I went ahead and bid on it. She is about 115 grams so I'm assuming she's a few months old. When I inspected her upon arrival she had what looks like some scarring on the neck (should probably have been disclosed) but seemed healthy and alert. She had never been fed frozen thawed so maybe a live mouse bit her, who knows. She didn't ball up and started crawling up my arm, but I avoided the temptation to handle her further and put her in her tub. She immediately took a frozen/thawed rat pup for me which was great, as I had expected her to be a problem feeder or to at least need some time to get switched over to frozen. She explores her tub like crazy at night so I think I'm going to put her in an AP cage so she can have more room. She just isn't shy at all and seems to want to take an active part in being handled. She does have spider wobble but it is not severe and I expected it. (For those of you not that familiar with ball pythons, the spider mutation is a pattern mutation and oftentimes the animal will wobble, kind of like the stargazer mutation in sunkissed lines, except wobble appears to be an effect of the spider allele itself and not a separate mutation). Anyways, I couldn't be happier with her! I'm probably going to pair her with an enchi het albino, because I love the oranges that come out in the enchi albino combos. But enough rambling, here's a quick photo I snapped when she arrived!
