Resposibility

That is a picture of me holding the beautiful CocoRosie. My dad took it a few months ago. I've been trying to get a good picture of her face, but holding a camera and CocoRosie at the same time is not conducive to good health, so this will have to do for now.
As I've mentioned before, she is an Everglades rat snake. That makes her a diurnal constrictor. If you could see her eyes you would see that the pupils are round, not in the shape of slits. This makes her able to see better during the day, and makes her a lot more active than a nocturnal snake. She is very fast and don't be fooled by how thin she looks, she is incredibly strong. When she gets on my arm like in the picture, she can give me quite an uncomfortable squeeze. Of course, she is not doing it on purpose, she is just trying to hold on. Don't believe what people tell you about constrictors, they don't just start squeezing you randomly to kill you. If he or she bites you and starts squeezing, then you can worry and try to get help, otherwise the snake is just using you as a tree branch or whatever. Snakes are NOT out to get you.

I'm writing with Topkapi. She started off on my lap, but has now worked herself onto the keyboard, and she keeps hitting the backspace key, so I've had to retype a lot. I think she's jealous because I was writing about some other snake. Damn it, she won again!
No, I will not be bested by a reptile. Back to CocoRosie: when I first got her, which was almost a year ago, she was pretty wild. The previous owner who'd only had her a little while works at Venom One and did not have as much time as she would have liked to handle her snakes. She decided she needed to make room in her collection and was looking for a good home for her. I gladly volunteered. It's funny because when I went to pick her up, she was in her own homemade carrying bag. It was made of a really pretty patterned cotton, so see I'm not the only crazy person spoiling their snakes. Our dad was driving, and I was sitting in the back seat (he is not too fond of my snake babies), and she kept sticking her head out of the bag to see what was going on.
It took a while to get her to the point where her first reaction was not an agressive one. I took her out every morning for weeks until I could stick my hand in her cage with impunity. She has not bitten me yet. She's the only one of my babies that has "mood" swings, and I've learned to recognize them and respect them. She is also the oldest of my snakes, around 10 years, but I'm hoping she'll live many more. Snakes can live up to 30 years in captivity so they are a pretty big commitment. That's one of the problems with people buying an animal without doing the research. Yes, it looks very cute as a baby in the store, but can you provide the proper nutrition and space when the animal grows, and do you want it around for 30 years? You can't just let it loose once you tire of him or her. Do your homewrok people!