Barbossa's Story

Barbossa ate his two mice yesterday like a good little snake. I don't understand why he's not growing. Maybe it's so gradual that I don't see it, and I did not measure him when I first adopted him, but he doesn't look much bigger and it's been two years. He eats every week and he sheds regularly, I just want him to become a big, fat snake that requires ten people to lift. That's a bit of an exaggeration, a boa is never going to be that big, but you get my drift.

I haven't written about how he came into my possession. He belonged to the brother of one of my sister's friends. My sister had slept over in her friend's house and she was given this guy's room to use, since he was not at home at the time. Barbossa was in a cage in that room. She called me and told me that the snake kept pacing up and down, trying to find a way out. Her friend even told her he had escaped from his cage before. I can't even fathom how, my little shy baby Barbossa, could have conceived to escape his cage. He must have been really miserable. I told my sister to tell the guy who owned Barbossa that if he ever wanted to sell him or give him away, I would gladly take him. At that time, I only had Topkapi.
A few weeks after that, surprise surprise, my sister gets a call from her friend. Her brother wanted to sell Barbossa. We talked about the price and within a week he was in a new home.
We picked him up in his tank and he was an angel the whole car ride to our house. His cage was filthy, with months of dried feces stuck to the corners, so the first thing I did was take him out to clean it and to fill it with mulch. I took him out and he got into what I thought was a defensive position. I was pretty sure he was going to bite me. Now, the only contact I'd had with snakes was with Topkapi, and when I first got her she was a little spit-fire. Any quick movement would get her to strike. If she got in the "S" position, you were about 3 seconds from getting bitten. So, when Barbossa got his upper body in an "S", I thought "here we go..." But, no, he did not even hiss. Knowing him well now, I can look back at that moment and be amused. That's the way he moves his body. He curls around himself, and lifts his body in all kinds of weird ways, always trying to keep his head close to his coils. It wasn't aggression, it was a confused snake getting his bearings. He has never bitten, or attempted to bite, any of us.
I left him alone that night. The next day, I started taking him out, only for a few minutes at a time, to get him used to being handled again. Fast forward two years and he now walks happily around the pool for an hour each afternoon, on top of the half hour upstairs in the morning. He is still shy and cautious, but they can't all be Topkapi, can they?