I just recently purchased a small Common Garter. First off, it is a beautiful snake with a bright, broken, orange stripe on each of its sides. It's about one foot and a half long. Being a Garter Snake keeper noob, I'm having "new animal anxiety". I know my stuff about keeping Easterns, but I've never actually owned one. I tried feeding an earthworm to it, but the Garter slithered away. It is probably just getting used to me being around it's cage (tomorrow, I'm putting black construction paper on the sides, so it will be more secure) a lot. I'd be sitting by the cage, then stand up, and suddenly the snake jumps a almost a foot high on the wall. I've put my hand in the cage after it settled down for a day, and slowly proceeded to picking it up, and it dashed away to the wall leaving musk on me. When I actually did get to pick it up it was slithering in my hands, relativley calmy, sometimes pulling back from a finger being too close. My main questions are: How do I get it to calm down around me, or is it a slow natural process? How long should I wait before feeding him for the first time? Thanks in advance.