Stupid things that snakes do.

[adamanteus]

I had a freind once who kept a Retic in a big, walk-in viv. He was in there one day, cleaning up when she grabbed him by the wrist and wrapped around him. She tied his wrists to his ankles and he was four hours rolling around on the floor with her before he got free! He was pretty badly bruised.

[Cazador]

Man, that'd make you have to clean your pants!

[adamanteus]

She didn't wrap his body at all. Just tied his arms and legs together. She was only about 15 foot at the time, but they're a mega aggressive species.

[Thamnophis]

Normally we take one of the snakes out of the terrarium. This is 6 m X 4 m X 2,5 m. We have a sepearte room atached to this terrarium whee one snake can eat.
This is normally done BEFORE we are goning to feed them.
Both animals showed signs of shedding their skin in a week or so. We were not planning to feed them.
But... there were two dead rabbits left so and both snakes were laying as far apart as possible (but still togeteher in ONE terrarium).
We thought it could be done... the feeding.
We both gave a rabbit to one snake. Everything went well.
But... the enormous female thought that the rabbit of the male was better and she left hers alone and slithered to the male.
I kept her away for some time with a broom.
But the male was very slow in eating and in one moment she grabbed him.
We always are with at least two people while we are feeding our large snakes (also P. molurus and P. sebae).
But when they start "fighting" there is not much you can do without risking your life!
They are in feeding-mode on that moment and grab everything they can.
And you will not survive when a big girl like that grabs you.

Before we could decide what to do she let the male go and we could give here the rabbit she had left.
Both snakes had their mouth full with rabbit and now we could drag the male into the other cage.

So it were not the snakes that were doing something stupid, but we were!!!

In spite of all the experience we both had we made a real mistake. This ended well, but who knows what could have happend!

[adamanteus]

That could have turned really nasty Fons! Some of these bigger Pythons scare me. People are sometimes inclined to forget the raw power of the real giants, especially if their "pet" is normally placcid. As you have illustrated, it only takes one tiny slip and things can go badly wrong.

[Thamnophis]

The big lady of 6 meters and 80 kilo scares me too a little. Eventhough it is a gentle, friendly animal.
I am glad that I am a bit scared, so I stay sharp. A misstake is easy made.

[krystalirelan@southslope.]

I can see the loop. Hey while we are talking about eating things...what about Mollies? they breed well and are cheap. any reason not to feed to a garter?

[GarterGuy]

That could have turned really nasty Fons! Some of these bigger Pythons scare me. People are sometimes inclined to forget the raw power of the real giants, especially if their "pet" is normally placcid. As you have illustrated, it only takes one tiny slip and things can go badly wrong.

Yeh, I tend to not cross the predator/prey line when I'm looking at pets. No matter how nice retics look......anything that will eventually look at me as food is not going to happen.....that's what zoos are for.