Stories Of My Life

Snakes Don't Make Good Pets

I personally love snakes when I was little I wanted a snake so bad and when I turned nine on my birthday me and my brother adopted two snakes a albino corn snake and a black and white banded corn snake one was Pinky and the other was Cory. We had to take Pinky back the next day cause she was to aggressive and she was one of our first snakes so we didn't have the experience to properly handle and tame her not to mention she stole Cory's food. Cory on the other hand he was mellow and very sweet people would just fall in love with him even my sister who is terrified of snakes held him a few times, but sadly he wouldn't eat we took him to the vet a few times and they would try to force feed him he'd throw it up and he would even let my family force feed him so we gave him back hoping he'd start eating and adopted a different snake named Strawberry she was almost albino but not quite. Sadly about 4 months later Cory starved despite being force fed baby food cause that's the only thing he'd keep down he only lived a little over a year.

This is an example as why to not get a snake yes they can be very sweet and have a ravenous healthy apietes but quite a few snakes if moved from where they were raised sold or their first home will become stressed out and refuse to eat and slowly starve over the course of about 10 months. Another reasons they take quite a bit of care you don't just stick them in a big or good sized or small cage feed it water it and clean up its poop. If you want a friendly and happy animal you should handle at least once every other week better to aim for once a week daily handling unless nessiary will just stress a snake out, you have to have certin humitiy depending on the type of snake, you have to have a SAFE bedding some bedding his poisonous cedar bedding is to NEVER be used with any snake but their may be other bedding that work for one snake but not another, but newspaper works fine if you'd much rather deal with soggy newspaper, they have to have a big enough water bowl to soak in not all like water a lot but it can help fight against snake mites witch any reptile can get them but snakes are more prone and their essentially reptile fleas and it can help with shedding or getting off stuck pieces it can also help raise humitiy, you have to have a hiding spot just the right temperature and basking part a safe high temperature this widely changes depending what type of snake you have, snakes if to cold mostly in winter will get respiratory infections and most snakes have only one working lung so it can easily be deadly. You have to usually feed them weekly unless their longer than five feet and fat than maybe every other week, usually you will feed snakes frozen you thaw them and give them to the snake but once you feed them live the will most likely NEVER eat frozen again and live rats can kill snakes they will bite and scratch my friends snakes face is deformed because of a very mean rat, unless you break the jaw and maybe cut the nails it's better to stick to frozen and it can lower your chances of the snake mistaking you for food and another thing is feed them in a separate cage so they know what goes in that cage is food and their main cage doesn't have food so if you pick them up your less likely to be mistaken for food (if you have a 5 foot python and they strike and quickly bite they can leave lots of punctures and even bruised knuckles, happened to me that's for another chapter tho.) People can be very scared of snakes so people may not want to be at your house for fear the snake might get out (believe me they can be escape artists or they can just have a forgetful parent/s.) You usually can't keep to snakes in the same cage it can cause injured snakes not even professionals usually don't keep snakes together unless their breeding or their very chill but snakes can feel like the other may steal their food cause in the wild they avoid each other unless breeding season and the age of the snake verys and if they were raised together. I'll probably elaborate tips if you have snakes or are getting a snake in another chapter. Until next update~Ash