London 12:07 am Amsterdam 01:07 am Helsinki 02:07 am Moscow 03:07 am
Posted by Laura on April 03, 2002 at 17:32:34:
My boyfriend recently bought a Californian King snake from a friend because it was scared and kept striking at her (she never dared handling it). I think it was born in about July/August 2001 but maybe a little bit earlier. My boyfriend is used to keeping a boa but he thought he'd try to tame this one because he knows an 8 yr old boy that wants a relatively small, tame snake to start with. We started handling him straight away as he was very afraid around humans and we wanted to get him used to handling, but we have a problem. Firstly, he doesn't seem to be responding to handling and is still scared of us (this is about 2 months on)- sometimes he even excretes, as he's so frightened. Secondly, we've been told to feed him as much as he'll eat every 6-8 days, but he's always hungry and he seems to eat vast amounts (we've started feeding him every few days now, but he still tried to eat my thumb today. It wasn't a vicious or scared strike at me, but he actually tried to swallow my thumb....he even wrapped himself around it and cut off the blood. We submerged his head in water but that didn't work, and after about 15 minutes I managed to prise his jaws away with a stick.) Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had any solutions and I wanted to know just how much a small snake like that should be eating a week (he's on pinkies). Any info or just a small but helpful email would be very much appreciated.