Wednesday 31 August 2016

Pet Snake Number 2

When we decided to buy a ball python, the idea was originally to get a female and keep her until she was big enough to get her a boyfriend. Of course that didn't work because we fell in love with Cuddles. After that we figured, "one snake, two snakes, what's the difference?"

Because my boyfriend picked out Cuddles, I got to search for this beautiful little girl. We drove to London to pick her up, and the man who bred her had about 700 snakes all in plastic tubs around the walls in his bedroom. That's the life of a proper snake breeder I suppose. Fingers crossed we won't get to that point! Our snakes live like kings and queens, no plastic tubs for our babies.

Meet Nymeria the ball python!




Nymeria is a cheeky monkey that never wants to sit still. She has these amazing silvery eyes and a pale script-like pattern on her back. Genetically, she's going to make stunning babies. Like Cuddles, she has three co-dominant genes. She has 'GHI' which is a very dark morph that causes her amazing bright spine patterns, 'Butter' which is a cleaner form of the 'Lesser' that Cuddles has, and 'Pastel' which intensifies the colours, gives her those white lips, and makes the blushing you can see on her head. While she's not as immediately striking as the bright yellow of Cuddles, she's very elegant looking and won't turn as brown as she ages. Nymeria also has the advantage of eating like a monster. She'd eat anything, every single day if we gave it to her. Once she's finished her rat she'll go off searching for more and try to get Cuddles' too, while he's still sniffing at it thinking "hmm, am I hungry?" You can just tell that this girl wants to be big.

When Nymeria is in shed it shows up a lot clearer than any of the others. Her eyes and skin go a cloudy blue as you can see below.


On the right is her shed skin taken a few days later. She wrapped it all up into a little knot for us to find. Sheds in one piece are a good indication that the snakes are well looked after. A lot of people seem to forget about humidity which is a shame, and blame the snakes for being 'bad shedders.' The two rescue snakes we got are an example of that, both of which have always shed perfectly with us. More about them in a later post.

Let me know if you get tired of snake posts, okay?

Limpet x

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