Call your DNR before you buy an animal.
Skip Discord if you’re over 14 or have more than one year of experience as a keeper: whichever comes first.
That’s the way it is. Every captive animal has compromises made on their behalf and the ball python has a very long history of captivity.
I wouldn’t be too quick to write someone off as a minimalist and point fingers until you’ve had lots of experience.
In my experience younger females will roam. Males usually don’t roam nearly as much. If you get a particularly nervous individual then $200 in PetSmart junk (the usual “enrichment” for some people) is not going to make a difference. Compound in the explosive dry sheds and damaged tails with keepers using aspen and a badly placed unused humid hide… There are still keepers out there claiming you are supposed to soak them for preventative maintenance
Their natural behaviors are to sit in a hole in burrows and termite mounds shaped from loam. Before someone references the tree thing make sure to compare a tree in West Africa to a tree near you. Good luck if you have an individual imprint on birds.
If you manage it successfully then
I’d love to see pictures from someone with a tree, burrows, and termite mounds in a 40ga.
I was talking to my wife about this thread and saying how lucky we have been so far with the boas to not have any real problems like some of yous have had, and she quickly reminded me of the worst thing that has happened.
.
When I first got my 2 boas, I was only prepared for one of them, I only had the one enclosure ready at home, but what I did have was a small fish tank sat in a cupboard and a load of aquarium ornaments… One of them being this:
It’s a hollow shipwreck that comes in 2 pieces, it’s a really nice bit of decoration and acted really well as a hide on either side of the tank.
I woke up one morning not long after getting them to find the whole tank a mess with snake poop and decided to give it a clean. As I started pulling stuff out of the way to grab Khaleesi, he wriggled off into his boat to hide. I left him there while I got everything else out and as I eventually went to lift the boat up he wriggled off again… But this time not as successfully. He tried to squeeze out of a tiny opening/door (you can see it next to him on the picture) and got stuck with his head only partially through.
I panicked, he panicked and there was a whole lot of commotion. He was still trying to squeeze through and I couldn’t get to his body because it was inside the boat, so the only place I could get to was his half squished face that really didn’t appreciate being poked by a finger.
After about 10 minutes I was close to taking a small hammer to the boat to try and break it apart but my wife came to the rescue with vaseline and a whole lot of patience. She managed to use a cotton bud to push all his scales back down (that had became lodged awkwardly in his struggles) and work him out.
It doesn’t sound too bad compared to some of your stories but I really wish I would have taken a picture now, the weird angle he got stuck really made it difficult and worrying. All the damage he had was a few scratches on his scales and he shed a short time later and looked brand new. I filled all the small openings in the boat with aquarium silicon to stop it happening again but I ended up taking it out completely because I didn’t want to risk it.
Don’t be seduced by big names. I thought it was ok to spend $650 on an animal others were selling for $350, because it must be of higher quality because it comes from A famous company with a cult-like following. Right? Wrong.
If your face to face with a breeder in their snake room, what questions would you ask and what would you look at before even considering buying from them?
I’d ask to handle the animal, look at its parents and offspring if possible, and also look at his other animals to see if they are in good condition as well. Because some breeders take care of their animals they want to sell but dont take great care of their breeders.
My scariest moment was during shipping. I bought 3 snakes and they were delivered a block over on someone else’s front porch. I saw the delivery truck go by my house and checked tracking info, yep, it said it was delivered. I went on a search, and looking like a porch pirate. That could have been one heck of a surprise for someone. From now on all shipping stops at the hub and I pick it up as soon as the plane hits the ground. They are all doing good to this day.
It’s crazy isn’t it, we have a love and obsession with these animals that have a simple stimulus-response brain the size of a pea, and human beings are the ones that mess it up.
Yeah, it happens. There’s this one person i follow on tumblr who had a hatchling from half an egg - sometime during incubation they candled their eggs only to find one sort of half dry/dead but with healthy looking veins in other half. It hatched just in time with others but was less than half the size, othervise healthy. Maybe one half of a twin where the other one died? Who knows. The thing is, it happens and i saw one like that on pictures last summer.
I was shocked by the 19 gram hatchling. He absorbed all of his own yolk and looked like he had appropriate weight for his size. The egg was normal sized, not a boob egg or anything. There was a lot of white matter left in the egg, but nothing resembling a snake. I’m thinking maybe it was a twin egg where only one hatchling developed? I’m not sure. Either way, the tiny hatchling started on pinks and he’s been doing just fine. Here’s a pic of him right after he hatched.
And here he is at 38 grams, beside another average-sized normal that hatched about the same time.
How do you find a FedEx Hub? I think my brain is broken, but I can’t seem to find them.
I work all around FedEx buildings, so I actually might be closer to one at work rather than at home.
I’m also near an airport where they fly in/out of. Is the hub info on their site?
I think you can look up FedEx shipping center (not FedEx office). Generally the packages are unloaded from the plane right into the FedEx shipping center. My local hub is technically at the airport in an out building. Most businesses that are doing shipping will help you to find the right location for your area.
If you already have a tracking number there’s a button to request to hold it at a hub.
If you haven’t shipped yet you can check here: https://www.fedex.com/locate/index.html
Use “I want to …” → More → Hold at Location
I always ship live animals to the hub and pick them up. I don’t trust them being carted around in the truck for 8+ hours in whatever weather conditions.
No you can only receive your snakes in a fedex staffed facility, not Walgreens or print and ship, to make it easier select hold at location and dangerous goods, so only fedex hubs (ship center) show.
Can’t find red sand/desert sand at any local pet store. Not really in range of a Home Depot, etc, so I just decided to suck it up and try to hit up PetSmart. Wander around. Can’t find it. I can see a bag of it in “Bearded Dragon Kit” with a terrarium, etc. Clerk comes up and does their shpiel. They ask “What animal is this for?”
“Woma.”
“A what?”
“Woma. Woma python.”
“Oh, a python. We won’t sell you that because sand messes up humidity.”
“What? Humidity isn’t a concern. This is an Australian python. I just need this stuff in this Bearded Dragon Kit.”
“Pythons aren’t from Australia, they’re from Africa, and the sand is going to mess up your humidity and cause impactions. We don’t sell it to you so that you don’t kill your snake.”
… and just a few minutes later I got kicked out of PetSmart.
There are still keepers out there claiming you are supposed to soak them for preventative maintenance 
and decided to give it a clean. As I started pulling stuff out of the way to grab Khaleesi, he wriggled off into his boat to hide. I left him there while I got everything else out and as I eventually went to lift the boat up he wriggled off again… But this time not as successfully. He tried to squeeze out of a tiny opening/door (you can see it next to him on the picture) and got stuck with his head only partially through.
Here’s a pic of him right after he hatched. 
Weird. Good job, FedEx website.