Ball Python Care....( very very long)

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Posted by Whalesong on May 04, 2003 at 00:02:31:

In Reply to: Ball Python Care....(long) posted by poetichusky on May 03, 2003 at 21:29:25:

I completely hear your frustrations. Mine are of a different nature, but I still feel very strongly. A girl I know (we lived in the same dorm last year) has a grey rat snake. He is 3 1/2 feet long. She keeps him in a ten gallon tank on sand she gets from the beach. She feeds him one live mouse every two weeks in his sandy cage. She has a massive light on the cage, eliminating hte possibility of a cool spot for him to escape the 87 degree heat. He has diarrhea from ingesting the sand and he bites. A biting CB colubrid! Such a thing almost never happens. The girl is extremely stubborn. She raged at me for telling her what to do when I offered to GIVE her a spare 15 gallon tank I had and when I offered to go in with her when mail-ordering frozen rodents. She said, "He eats live, and that's that." I want to kidnap her snake but then she could accuse me of stealing. I do not know what to do.

Another beef I have is with stupid college kids. I feel I havethe right to complain because I AM a college student. I know from personal experience how stupid my fellow students can be. I got my 4-foot ball python from a stupid freshman who was KEEPING HIM UNDER HIS BED IN A PILLOW CASE AND FEEDING HIM LIVE RATS. Another freshman went to the herp show in Tampa in march. He bought a baby sulcutta (african spur-thigh tortoise, grows to 200 pounds) and a green anaconda (grows to 20+ feet). WHAT IS HE GOING TO DO WITH THOSE ANIMALS WHEN THE GET HUGE?? DOES HE REALIZE THEY MIGHT LIVE LONGER THAN HE DOES??????? Ther is another kid who has a 7-foot columbian redtail boa in a 65-gallon mesh tank. He also refuses to feet f/t because he believes that if an animal istoo stupid to kill its own food then it doesnt' deserve to live. I am ready to turn it back on him, who certainly does not kill the cows that become his burgers ot hte pigs that become his pepperoni. I want desperately to rescue these animals but then it would be cruel to house them all in my little dormitory room, and I would be over the pet limit.

I feel I cannot let these poor cratures die, but I can't risk criminal charges. The dilemma keeps me up at night when my physics homework doesn't. What do I do? Write off the poor animals? Can I get the images of them out of my head? Sigh.

I think people need to realize that pets are not like toys or posters that can be gotten rid of ot thrown out when they are no longer cool or easy to take care of.

Boy am I pissed. I do everything I can to take good care of my animals, but these stupid kids make a mockery of herp owners and make it hard for those of us who are honest and care for our animals to have them on-campus.

:Hi All,
: This really isn't too much of a question, but I just had to vent. I work at PetSmart and although we don't have much in the selection of herps, I'm a herp lover and I love my job anyways. There's just something that urks me to no end and that's an ignorant snake owner. I may not be an expert, but I do know the basics. Last night a man brought in two juvie ball pythons. They immediately caught my eye, as Balls are my favorite and they seemed to be healthy from a distance. When I got up close to look at them, they had nasty burn marks all over their bellies, scars scattered all over their skin, were undernourished, and lifeless. Let's just say, I needed to have a chat with this guy, in a polite way. He proceeded to tell me that he feeds his Balls one small live mouse, once a month. The larger one, could've easily taken a small sized rat. Not only are these two "males"(they looked like a sexual pair to me), housed together in a "55 gallon mansion" in his words, but fed together also. He said, and I quote "I just drop one in and whoever gets it, gets it". He also insisted that I shouldn't feed my Balls once a week(which is what I suggested to him), because I'm overfeeding them and they'll be dead in a year. Not only that he informed me that the more I feed my balls, the more they will grow. I dunno about any of you, but I thought snakes are supposed to grow. lol As we talked more, I told him how I'm trying to get mine swtiched to FT, and he warned me that, I should never do such a thing, because it will harm them due to the fact that they're used to live. I pointed out the burns, which were really nasty and looked to be quite painful. He told me well, I had a hot rock in my tank, but I took it out. Thank god he took it out(supposedly). The scars? He said, "Those aren't scars, they're getting ready to shed". They were clearly either terrible bite marks from prey, or scale rot. I've never seen scale rot in person, but I thought it was a possibility. When I suggested that he should take them to a vet to be looked at, or at least put some neosporin on the burns, he told me confidently that they are healing fine without it and he didn't need to take them to a vet, because he didn't want to pay a vet to tell him something he already knows. He really wouldn't hear any of my advice, whatsoever. I really felt for the little guys. They are certainly going to suffer their whole life and possibly die a miserable slow death. I wanted to take them from him and nurse them back to health. Am I wrong for being outraged? Not only that, he really thought he was an expert on ball pyhtons and was trying to give ME advice. Ever butt heads with someone like this? Doesn't it just heat you to no end? Not to mention this other guy that came in today, looking for MICE to feed to his 8 foot Boa and 5 foot Burm. When I suggested he feed them rats, or in the case of his boa, a small rabbit possibly, his reply was, "I'm not ready to feed them rats or rabbits". What the fiznuck? Sorry for this long, venting post, but this stuff really gets to me. It breaks my heart, because of the poor snakes who are left to depend on uneducated people to care for them.
:-Cathy

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