i just love snakes a lot

I visited a friend yesterday and got to visit with Cookie here for a while. He's a very sweet, high-white Solomon Islands ground boa. The species as a whole is unusual in the hobby, and not a lot has been well established with them, so she and her family have been pulling together research and working with them for a few years now in the hopes of increasing general knowledge of the various subspecies as well as improving husbandry knowledge overall.

This is actually the family my excess mice from breeding go to, and this is one of the snakes they feed! I'm very in love with their project, and I like being able to see these fascinating creatures up close. Unlike many pet-trade species of snakes, their back scales are rough, a little like very smooth pavement. I always enjoy petting snakes, but there's something a little extra magical about touching these ones that sets off my "this is what touching a dragon feels like" sense.

I recently took in a rehome of that morph and poor baby can’t tell up from down, struggles to eat because she can’t aim to strike her food, has to be kept in absolute perfect conditions otherwise her conditions get worse… she’s beautiful, but it’s so sad to see what peoples need for aesthetics do. There’s so many pretty morphs that don’t have this in them - it’s infuriating that people just don’t care about the animals suffering.

Don’t breed spider morph ball pythons, folks.

Anyway! Sorry. Rant over, I’m just mad. Have a good night!