Snake Poo...

We recently acquired a baby ball python. It's a beautiful thing, and ultra fun to watch. I feel slightly guilty feeding him, since he eats mice, the smaller cousin of our lovely ratties, but hey, snakes gotta eat, too...right? The process is slightly gruesome since, for a myriad of reasons, I am feeding frozen mice. You have to set the mouse on the counter for about an hour for it to defrost, then put it in a cup of hot water to bring the body temperature up to something that a snake will find appealing. I try to be furtive and hide my actions from the ratties so as not to disturb them...though since they're predators and just as likely to eat a mouse as the snake is, maybe they would just wonder where theirs was.

Now, when you have as many animals as I do, you sort of become immune to the ickiness of pet excrement. between vacuuming up rat droppings and cleaning litter boxes, feces really has little ick factor at this point. Except, that is, for snake feces. For those unfamiliar with snake poo, it may be the most disgusting thing I've ever seen/smelled in my life. This I would imagine has something to do with their extended digestion process...but geez...

Luckily for both me and the snake (whom we've named Sal-as in Salazar) this is an occurrence that happens only every three weeks or so. Because if this was a daily thing...he/she/it (don't know the sex yet, and we may never since sexing a snake involves either a blood test or something called "probing" which given snake anatomy sounds rather icky) might find itself looking for another home.

The addition of the snake is just yet another step in my quest to become a hermitess living in the woods since about half the people I know hate/fear the rats and the other half are deathly afraid of snakes. It kinda makes me laugh, though, because the python's a whopping 15 inches long at this point, and it's head is roughly the size of a quarter, but it still freaks people out.

I've got my eyes on a beautiful pink-toed tarantula (which is a strictly look and don't touch pet). Cassidy's father says if I get the tarantula he refuses to set foot in the house...hmmm...kind of a bonus I guess.