Adventures with a Boa

Barbossa had a bit of an adventure yesterday.
He somehow, for some reason, decided he'd been in his cage long enough. It was time for something new. I ascended the stairs with his mice, but he was not in his cage. Unusual, no, unheard of.
How did my shy baby get the courage to attempt a daring escape?

I scoured the room, knowing he couldn't leave because he couldn't get his coils past the door. I found him under the large, large bookcase. He'd gotten underneath and was curled up, happy in his new, if constrained hiding spot. I prodded him gently, but nothing. I would have to move the bookcase, but it's not an easy affair when it is as tall as the room, and packed with books.

So I calle dthe cavalry, my mom and dad. They'd recently bought one of those thingies (see the technical term?) to prod furniture up to place sliding pads underneath, so we used it to carefully lift the bookcase. I cannot describe the scene that ensued, my dad pushing the bookcase up, my mom sticking books underneath to keep it propped up, and I, with my hands under the bookcase, playing a game of catch-me-if-you-can with Barbossa. I grabbed him by the tail, but he was knotted up in his own coils, so I had to keep turning him, unwinding him like a scarf, until finally, with one more tug, he came free.
We were all sweaty and tired, but he looked none the worse for wear, if a bit sheepish. Yes, snakes can look sheepish.
So that was my Sunday afternoon. Interesting, no?

Bounty Hunters

My mom found Coral yesterday!
She came into my room as I was about to get up and told me she was beneath the sink. She saw her but could not make herself grab her. Coral is a bit intimidation, although she is more of a bully than anything else.
So, of course, by the time I made it downstairs, and I mean the few seconds it took me, she was of course gone. Yeah. Just picture the two of us, neither my mom nor I were fully awake, hunting a multi-colored snake through the many bottles of detergents and cleaners. The funny thing is that mom told me Coral had been wrapped around the jar where I defrost the snake's mice on feeding day. She smelled it out!
We found her in the cupboard next to the sink, hiding underneath a bunch of cloth napkins. She didn't even bother striking or hissing.
One for the humans! Yay!!
Now let's see how long it takes her to escape again.
Anyone want to put money on it?

Beauty Kings and Queens

That's a fer-de-lance, most certainly not one of my babies, but one I saw today when I went to the Miami Zoo.
Today is my mom's birthday so we decided to spend the day roaming the large and beautiful zoo we have. I think it's the only worthwhile thing Miami has to offer. There are so many animals, so well kept, that it's something to really be proud of in this city.



That one is a bushmaster, the longest viper in the world. I think he or she is gorgeous.



And that's an eyelash viper. They are called so because of the protruding scale above the eye. They have many colorations, but I think my favorite is this bright yellow. It's incredible.

By the way, another of my poems is up, you can find it here: http://berg-gasse19.com/2010/12/29/guilty-conscience/

The Spa

I just finished a VIP spa treatment for Barbossa. He is shedding, and he looks like a mess. Something's going on in the snake room/library because the air conditioning seems to be sucking all the moisture from the air quicker than it used to. I even have a window slightly open to let in some of this perfect Miami humidity, and still my babies are having trouble shedding. I spray them pretty much every hour but it doesn't seem to be working. I might have to resort to drastic measures: put all the tanks in the garage (I don't even want to ponder the outrage Topkapi would feel), or I could get a humidifier. One of those portable ones. I used to have one, that I took with me when I was auditioning for music programs. I went up to North Carolina, it was freezing, and the hotel room's heating would have dried my voice out completely if not for the humidifier.
The problem of using that is that not all my snakes shed at the same time, so I would be increasing the humidity needlessly for some of them, therefore putting them at risk of getting respiratory infections. There is no easy solution. Aaaaah!

Well, anyway, let me explain what the spa treatment consisted of. First I soaked Barbossa in the bathtub for a few minutes. Probably five, because he did not want anything to do with the water and he was getting very scared. Then I placed him on the bathroom floor and turned the shower on at full blast at the hottest it would go. This, of course, creates steam. My mom and dad used to do this for me when I was little because I suffered from pretty severe asthma attacks. My dad would sit with me in the sauna that was the bathroom and made me breathe in deeply. If you suffer from any breathing problems, I recommend it, it really helps (if you can add some eucalyptus leaves to the water, even better). I still use it today when I get sick and feel on the verge of breathing trouble.
So today, I did this for my little shy boy. He seemed to like it.
I sat with him for half an hour, I read while he walked around. Then I put lots of baby oil on him and misted his cage to the soaking point. He seemed to be having less trouble right now getting rid of the leftover old skin, but I'll see. I might have to repeat the whole procedure.

Spring-ish Cleaning

Still trying to get everything back to normal after loosing CocoRosie.

Everyone else is doing well. I have Topkapi on my lap as I write this and she is working her way onto the keyboard, so if there are spelling mistakes, you know who to blame.
Yesterday was a cage-cleaning day. I scrubbed, wiped, polished ever cage except for Coral's. I did not have enough mulch for her cage, so I will be doing that either today or tomorrow. They didn't have the mulch which I usually use, which is a fir mulch, so I got the only other kind they had, which was coconut mulch. I'm not a huge fan of it because it is very light, too light, so it doesn't seem to absorb moisture as much as the other kind. Oh well, it'll have to do until next time.
My mom snake-sat while I cleaned. Of course, in typical Miami weather-style, as soon as I dragged the first cage outside, it decided to start pouring. There was thunder, lightening and tons of rain. I did Barbossa's cage and then had to retreat inside while the storm passed. I did Damascus's and Tybalt and Talulah's cages in the bath tub because I didn't want to waste time.
Then, when the sun finally came back out, I finished with Topkapi's cage.
Of course, the snakes found plenty to complain about. They obviously did not enjoy the new type of mulch either. Topkapi got on top of her water bowl and did not want to come down. She kept flicking out her tongue, sniffing at the horrible, poisonous, insulting mulch at her feet, well, coils. A few hours late she had accepted her plight and was sleeping in her regular spot. Their tantrums are incredible.
Even Damascus, who doesn't have mulch in his cage, only newspaper, complained. He curled up into a ball, with his head completely hidden, not wanting to look at the disaster around him. I had just changed his newspaper, not poured hot tar on him, but you wouldn't know it from his behavior.
They are hilarious.

Targets

Why is it that animals always seem to target our house? Is there a map somewhere out there in the animal world with our house circled in red, or maybe glowing in neon? Maybe it's not even the house but us, we're tagged as "Animal Lovers" and we have no way of hiding our true nature from all the furry, scaly, feathery creatures out there.
On Saturday, my mom and I went out walking around the neighborhood, as we sometimes do. This time we went later than usual, it was already getting pretty dark but the weather was beautiful and we said, why not? We walked to a park a few blocks away and then we walked back home. As we were crossing the street parallel to ours, we hear a meow. A high pitch, pathetic little cry. We looked around and saw a beautiful female cat, she must have been about 5 months old walking towards us. We stop and wait for her to catch up. She comes close, still crying, and starts rubbing herself against our legs, as cats invariably do. We petted her and said cute things to her and then we turned around to leave. She had been sitting on some one's yard, so we assumed that was her house. But no...she started following us home, meowing as she walked. At one point she actually got ahead of us and kept looking back to see if we were coming. She crossed the street with us and seemed to know very well which house we belonged to. I think she had scouted the premises and had been waiting to ambush us with her feline cuteness. Of course, we gave her a can of cat food, which she greedily ate, and the she munched on some more dried food that was out there to feed the mother duck laying on her eggs. Yes, she's still there, and no they haven't hatched yet.
It's getting a little insane at our house. Inside and outside.

Reptiles Galore

That is Termophilas. She is a red-footed tortoise and she is my mom's. My mom actually has 5 tortoises and 2 turtles (turtles are aquatic), so I thought I'd at least post a picture of one of them. This one is the first one she got, and she is also the most spoiled of the bunch. Termophilas has quite an attitude on her, although it might not look like it from her sweet, wrinkled face. She is always willing to fight for food, especially bananas and sometimes we have to separate her from the other ones for a few seconds until she calms down. None of us knew, until we started keeping tortoises, that they LOVE meat. Once a week we'll give them a little bit of chicken or lean meat and they go nuts. They eat and eat until there's no more and then they have so much energy they want to run (I use that word loosely) around the house. We usually let them walk a bit if they get too hyper after all that protein. Anyways, I just wanted to share one other inhabitant of our house.

Coral is finally out of her water and back to hiding under mulch. She must be getting ready to shed either tonight or tomorrow. Tybalt shed last night and he looks fabulous. I also noticed yesterday, when I was holding both Talulah and Tybalt in the same hand, how much fatter Talulah is. She is actually bigger than Tybalt. It's amazing that she, the reluctant feeder, has gotten so chunky. Now I need to get Tybalt back on the feeding schedule. He's the one giving me trouble now. Arghhh!

I started reading "The Sign of the Four" on Sunday. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am pretty much a Sherlock Holmes fanatic, so it came as no surprise that I had an urge to read one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. I'm pretty sure I've read this one before, but that has never stopped me from enjoying a book and I very much doubt I'll ever get bored of reading these stories. This short book is the second one Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson so he is still introducing the characters to us, which is great because I am relearning some things I'd forgotten about.
I will not even comment on the travesty of the recent movie with Robert Downey Junior, the whole thing is beyond appalling. If you've never read a Sherlock Holmes story and you've seen the movie, please pick one of the books up and you'll realize what a load of crap that film was. Don't take my word for it, see for yourself.

Happy Mama's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! That does include animal moms, like the duck we have by our front door sitting on her eggs. Yes, our house is going to be the site of around 16 duck babies' births. I don't know how animals do it, but they always seem to know that we welcome all kinds of them and that we will feed pretty much anything that appears at our doorstep. So, we are patiently waiting for all those little ducklings to be born. What's cuter to see than the babies waddling after their mom?

I wanted to post a picture of Topkapi with her blue eyes. You can see she looks very dull, her scales are lacking brilliance and color, but in a few days she will shed the old skin and look brand-spanking-new. She will also shed her eye caps. All snakes have a scale covering their eyes, which, since they don't have eyelids, they use as protection. The only problem is that when they start shedding, their eye scales also turn dull and they can't see well. Some of the snakes, like CocoRosie, get very nervous and aggressive, which is understandable. You wouldn't like people picking you up if you couldn't see well, either. Others, like Barbossa, get even shyer, if that's possible. And still others, like Topkapi, Damascus, Talulah and Tybalt, don't really give a crap one way or the other. I guess it comes from being in human contact since they were born. They are so tame, they feel no danger in our presence.

Yesterday, my mom and I went to the beach. The water was really glorious, but the sun was murder. This Miami heat is really becoming unbearable, you can feel the sun cutting into your skin. It doesn't even feel like burning anymore, it's like a million little paper cuts appearing on your skin. I didn't get truly burned because I carry my SPF 50 sunscreen pretty much everywhere I go, but still I have a tan. Once again, I HATE tans. I'm like a vampire (not the Twilight ones, if my skin glittered like a high school girl's at prom, I would die again of shame) the less sun I get on my skin, the better. Oh well, the water was incredible, so it was worth it. We'll probably go back next Saturday, but this time earlier in the day so the sun is not quite as brutal.
I'll be baking later in the afternoon, so I'll probably post either the recipe, the picture or if I feel really inspired, both.

Ok, I just finished baking. Here is the recipe for a simple vanilla cake

3 cups flour
2tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup milk
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. Add vanilla extract to the milk. Set aside. Beat butter and sugar. Add egss, one at a time, and beat after each addition. Add 1/3 of flour mixture to the butter mixture. Add half the milk to the batter. Beat well. Repeat.
Bake at 350 F. 30-40 minutes. Frost as desired.
Once again Happy Mother's Day!

Pagan Madness

I'm back!!! Fresh from 4 days of pagan craziness! Man am I tired, but it was tons of fun. I heard some really interesting workshops and listened to some good music (provided by the Australian band "Spiral Dance) and also fought bravely against the invading hoards of insects that threatened to eat my tent with me still in it. That's right people, a tent. No sharing a cabin for me. Even though they are available in the campsite, and even though they have air conditioning and running water, I like my privacy and sharing a room with seven other people would put me on a homicidal edge that is not conducive to my good health, not to mention other people's lives.

I got there on Thursday afternoon, around 3:30. The campsite is really removed from pretty much everything. It was a pretty nice and a big area, with a generous view of Lake Sellers and lovely trees to camp under. By the time I got there, a lot of the tenting spaces under all those beautiful trees had already been taken, so I had to make do under one solitary tree in the western (more sandy) part of the camp. As it turns out, this was a much better spot than where I had wanted to camp originally. The eastern part of camp was much, much louder and was also infested with wood ticks. I only had to contend with some pesky ants, the regular and the flying variety, which was much better than disease carrying ticks. I pitched my tent an set my beach chair facing the far trees. It was a lovely spot. At night, I had the labyrinth they set up on my right side and it was all lit up with twinkle lights, so I could see it from my tent. The picture above I took sitting on my chair from my site. The flag on the tree is the one my sister made for me. Snake and Crow Army. Yeah!

That first night we had the opening ritual, to tune our energies to each other and to the place. Then we had a brief meet-and-greet session, just to socialize a bit. I was out of there in about three seconds. I retreated to my tent to read.

The next morning, after an interesting shower in the trailer they had set up, and after a HUGE cup of coffee, I went to the first workshop. That ended around noon, and before lunch I checked out Vendor's Row. This was where, you guessed it, vendors were set up to sell their various things. They had some really lovely things. I bought two dresses, a wind chime for my mom, a stress-relieving stone for my dad, and a cool wall sculpture for my sister.
After lunch, provided by my own tent's private cafeteria-in-a-backpack, I went to the next workshop. This one was about making a Witches' Cord. This is a device that has many uses, but mostly it is a portal between worlds. It's really complicated, but very interesting.
When that was over I went to see a Druidic ritual. Not many people went to that, so it was a nice intimate setting and we all got a private rune reading, which was cool.
At 8 that night the band played a concert, very nice music that got people dancing and just having a lot of fun. My only peeve with all of this is that everyone was pretty much drunk. I understand drinking, I do it myself, but when you can't enjoy anything without being drunk or high it is not normal. Being drunk to the point of having hallucinations does not a mystical experience make. No one got aggressive or particularly disruptive, but you could see some people were about to topple over. I don't know. It bothered me a little bit.

That night, I was getting ready to turn off my lantern and go to sleep (enjoying the low drumming in the background coming from drum circle). I turned off the light, lay down...and a bird started singing. Now, I was pretty sure that birds, apart from owls, do not sing at night. They can't see well in the dark, so they sleep. Think of the parrots that quiet down as soon as you put a sheet over their cages. Apparently, I was very wrong.
I looked around to see where the sound was coming from, and of course, the bird was using the tree above my tent as his personal stage. He warbled, tweeted, chirped, squeaked, pretty much any sound his little throat could make he made throughout three long hours. You can imagine my surprise slowly but surely turning to irritation. I love birds, but I think this one was a bit off his rocker. I think I had a loony-tune bird on my tree.

After that night spent being the very much reluctant audience to avian opera, I had an even bigger cup of coffee and headed off to another workshop. This one was about raising energy for healing. After that, I went to the workshop that I was most interested in: Past Life Regression. The presenter led us through a guided meditation to help us see something from one of our past lives. It went very well. That's all I'll say about that.

We had the main ritual that night. It was a Native American, Cherokee, ritual that had been given to the High Priest to share with us. Truthfully, I was a bit disappointed. There was too much ceremony and not enough energy. I didn't feel anything at all, and I was bored. I wasn't the only one. Behind me, there was a bunch of teenagers that would not stop making comments and laughing at what was going on in the middle of the circle. If you think it's bullshit, why show up? This isn't school, no one is forcing you. But I guess that's teenagers.

That night the bird did come back, but only sang for about twenty minutes and then he blessedly shut up. The next morning I packed up my tent and started the looooong drive home.
Air-conditioning is a gift from the gods.
I really enjoyed the experience and hopefully I'll be able to go to the next one in November.

While I was gone, my sister took care of my babies. I had fed Topkapi before I left, but the other ones hadn't eaten yet so I fed some of them last night. Damascus and Talulah ate without problem, but Tybalt and Coral are shedding, so they did not eat. CocoRosie again refused food, so I'm pretty sure the fact that it is mating season has affected her eating patterns. I will continue to tempt her every week and try to keep the panic at bay. She IS an adult snake so she can go a bit without eating. Very rational, but means nothing when I see her reject food.

To Mulch or not to Mulch

Yesterday I fed all my babies. The only one that refused food, after behaving as if he were starving, was Tybalt. He is very sensitive to the light/dark schedule and this past week I've not been as attentive to that as usual. I had to leave pretty early every day for rehearsal and performances, and I would come home late at night. I thought that it hadn't been that bad, that I had adjusted the lights so they wouldn't feel the change, but I guess I was wrong. Picky, picky animals!
This coming week is normal, so there shouldn't be any more complaints from the snake department.
I fed Barbossa yesterday, and he ate two live mice. He missed the first one and struck a pile of mulch... which he proceeded to constrict. Picture me, standing with the feeding tongs in one hand, the PetCo box with one mouse left inside in the other, the cage open, Barbossa trying to kill mulch and meanwhile a mouse running around the snake without a care in the world. It was quite a picture. He finally realized that he was strangling wood and he at least had the decency to look sheepish at his mistake. He swallowed his pride and struck the mouse. He ate the two of them without further problems.

Coral was super funny yesterday also. I opened the cage, ready to get her out and feed her. She was inside her little hiding place, which looks like a hollow rock formation, and she refused to get out. She was way to comfy it seems. So I took out the whole rock, with her still inside, and I offered her the mouse. She took it, and ate it while curled up. Tell me that is not lazy! When she was done, I just lifted the whole thing and placed it back inside her cage, shook my head in disbelief and closed the glass door. They come up with something different every day.

My mom came yesterday with the box of mice and a new rat. His name is Vincent and he is also ridiculously cute. This one is not an albino, he is dark brown and white, with black eyes. This means that he has better vision than Gustav did. My mom says that he was the only one left in his cage, and she felt so bad about leaving him alone that he had to get him. There's no problem here, I'm always willing to take more pets in (although I think I've had my fill of dogs for a while).
I haven' baked anything for a few days, I haven't been able to do much for a few days, so maybe tomorrow I'll cook something and post the recipes and the pictures. I'll also see if I can get a picture of Vincent.