Responsibilities

My sister came yesterday with the news that one of the snakes at the center where she works is starving. STARVING. In captivity. It boggles my mind how something like this can happen. Well, maybe not so much because I know who runs the reptile division. The young man (I won't name names although I should) has said many times, and I quote "I hate reptiles". And yet, no one fires him, no one asks him for his feeding schedules, which is good for him because he doesn't keep any, no one does anything. Two snakes have already died in his care. How many more of them does it require for his supervisors to take charge of the situation?
My sister comes day after day, week after week telling me "well, he left without feeding them today" and I seethe at the words. I get stomach-aches of guilt if I am one day late in feeding my babies. We are keeping them in cages with the hope that we can give them safer lives, we trade freedom for steady meals. I just...I don't understand the mistreatment. If you don't care one iota for the poor creatures, then quit.
I told my sister that if they want, I can take care of the starving snake for a few weeks until she is back to the right weight, but I doubt they'll allow that. I have a freezer full of mice and patience by the bucket-full to coax her back into eating.

*whoo* Deep breath.

My precious ones are all doing beautifully (except for Ms. Coral who remains MIA). Topkapi has shed and looks like a movie star, Catherine Zeta-Jones style, while Barbossa is still mid-way through the process.
I took Damascus out yesterday and he is looking so chunky. Beautiful. I just want to snuggle against him, but he pulls back in disgust, a "human, away!" look in his eye.
Oh, well I must manage with my unrequited love.

Gift

Barbossa ate today! Yay! His holiday gift to me and I couldn't have asked for a better one.
Every one is doing wonderfully and all my babies ate except for Tybalt because the man who brings the live pinkies to the wildlife center did not come. He's sick or something, and I guess the world ends when he feels unwell. Don't the snakes in the center have to eat, also?
Human selfishness is unbelievable.

I got a new camera as a gift, so you'll be seeing tons of new pictures. My camera and I are practically attached at the hip.
Oh, I also had some more poems accepted in another literary magazine called Berg Gasse 19. They'll appear soon, so I'll post up the link when they're available.

Awwww...

Maat has shed and she looks impossibly cute. I can't get enough of looking at her beauty and gawking like a moron at how precious she is. I tried again today with a pinkie and still nothing, I will try again a few hours from now and if she doesn't take it I'll get my sister to bring a cricket from the wildlife center when she goes to work on Sunday. Sometimes baby corn snakes prefer crickets when they first start eating, the are smaller, easier for them to swallow, and it provides the same nutrients.
Tybalt ate his live pinkie yesterday without issue. I guess he is set on continuing my soul's progress to hell. Is it bad that it doesn't bother me quite as much anymore? I think it is.

Everyone else is dandy. Coral has been quite active for the past few days. I think she might be hungry since she did not eat last week. She'll get her mouse tomorrow, although I'm sure she would like it today. Sorry to disappoint, Coral.

Famous Snake

All the babies have hatched at the center. I think there were six of them in total, with two eggs that were not fertilized. My sister says that they are really feisty, striking at everything that moves around them. They still haven't shed, like most snakelings do, so they probably won't eat yet. Hopefully they are drinking water, though.
Yesterday, they had "Lizard Day" at the wildlife center, which is a day where you can bring you lizards and showcase them, with the chance of winning some fun herpetological prizes ie. heat lamps, magazine subscriptions, feeding tongs, etc. I didn't go because lizards are really not my thing. My sister was working so she got to see some cool monitor lizards and iguanas.
They are going to have "Snake Day" in August, and of course I will be there cheering for my ophidian friends. I never take any of my babies because they get needlessly stressed, but a lot of people take their beautiful, unique specimens in the hopes of winning "best in show". You get to see a lot of cool snakes.
Last year, Venom One brought a pair of black mambas in a huge cage so people could get relatively close to them. They were incredible. The year before, which is even cooler, they did a presentation with the black mamba that was in the movie "Kill Bill" (volume two, I think). A movie star snake!

I finished "The Swan Thieves" a few days ago. If you are interested in a review, head over to my other page by clicking on the link on the right called The Auburn Haired Magician.

Snakelings

My sister called a few hours ago to tell me that the first Burmese baby had hatched! She said he is very cute, green and brown. I wonder if any of the babies will be albino, like their daddy. I hope so.
Unfortunately, in the state of Florida you need a permit to have a Burmese python, so I can't get one. Otherwise, you can imagine how fast I would have made it to the center this morning.
It's so frustrating, especially when I know both of the parents and have handled the father quite a bit. Oh well, hopefully they go to good homes.

I just finished baking banana bread. It's a little different from the recipe I usually use, but I was getting a bit bored. This one uses more bananas.

Here's the recipe:

2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups mashed bananas

Sift flour, add baking powder, salt. In another bowl, beat butter and sugar. Add cinnamon, vanilla extract, eggs. Add the bananas. Mix well. Add the flour mixture, until just blended. Bake at 350 F. for an hour.

Eggs and Swans

No, not Bella.

The Burmese Python in the wildlife center is about to become a mom! She had laid a number of eggs a while ago, but they had looked like they were unfertilized, which has happened before with this particular snake. Snakes incubate their eggs by coiling up around them, like any other animal does, except for one tiny, little detail: snakes have no body heat. So, to provide warmth for her eggs, the momma snake starts making her muscles contract, making them twitch, which creates friction, which creates warmth for her babies. Nature is amazing. We think we're so smart.
Anyway, she got off the eggs today, and the staff checked on the condition of the babies. They seem to be fine, and they are now being incubated for the remainder of the week.
It's so exciting!

I started reading "The Swan Thieves" by Elizabeth Kostova. I had read her previous book "The Historian" and loved it so I picked this one up from the library on Saturday. So far, it is not disappointing. Good, concise prose and a quick but clear plot that keeps your attention on the characters. I'm not even halfway through, but I can already tell I am going to love this book.

Amusing Children

I almost wrote autistic children. Jeez.

I went yesterday to help at the wildlife center. The snakes look a bit better than they did last time. Mostly, it's because my sister took it upon herself to arrange the cages so that they had more and better hiding spots. Nothing makes a snake more anxious than being constantly visible to anything that passes by their cage.
While I was cleaning, checking for feces, etc. a man and his two daughters walk up to the reptile hut and start looking at the snakes. At that moment I was working on the pine snake cage. The smallest girl asks me why I have keys and why I am opening the door to the cages. I told her that I was making sure everyone had water, was okay and had a clean cage. She seemed very interested. She asked me if the snake would see if she put her hat on (she had one of those really floppy sun hats), I told her no, the snake could not see the hat. She proceeded to put it on anyways, I guess to make sure I wasn't lying. Not bad, find things out for yourself, not because someone tells you it's so.
The older girl told me that she had seen a black snake, just like the Indigo that's in the center, I asked her, knowing how rare these snakes are, if it was as big as the one in the museum. Behind her, her father made a negating gesture with his head. She said, well, no not quite that big. It was very amusing.

Barbossa ate today. They were really crazy mice. One of them kept jumping all over the cage. Finally I had to grab him with the feeding tongs so that Barbossa could get him. Cruel, but it must be done.

Feeding Frenzy Friday Part 15

Tybalt ate!!! He finally accepted a dead pinkie! I am so relieved. I hope that he continues like this, it would make things so much easier.
Talulah also ate without problems, but that's not much of a surprise, she is a little eating machine.
Coral ate with gusto. Now, I just have Topkapi to feed tonight, who already seems quite impatient. The problem is, with her, if I start feeding her early, she'll think that's it's eating time all the time (just like she thinks she's getting fed every single night) and that just wouldn't do. Someone's bound to loose a finger.

Tomorrow I'll probably be going over to help at the wildlife center. I'll help my sister clean the snake cages, change the mulch, etc. I do miss those snakes, so it'll be great to see them. Then I'll head over to the library to see if there is anything new and interesting in the animal department, and of course, to check out some good fiction books that I have had my eye on. We'll see what I find.

Feeding Frenzy Friday Part 14

Everyone that was supposed to eat today, ate.
Coral decided that she needed to keep her coils wrapped around my hand while she ate, so I was sitting there with half her body loosely holding on to me, waiting for her to finish swallowing the mouse. At least she seems to trust me enough to let me touch her while she eats. Thank the Gods she is smart enough to know she doesn't need to constrict the mouse, because otherwise I would have had a few unpleasant moments with her coils. She's little, but if she can kill a mouse with the pressure, it's bound to hurt a bit.
I gave Damascus two mice to keep him happy, and he was greedily expecting the third one.

SO, they decided to put the carpet python down. Another vet saw her and found tumors in her head so it was deemed the right choice to euthanize her. Poor baby, but it is better than her starving to death.
There was a huge argument, a ridiculous one, between my sister and the "reptile keeper" (my disdain for this boy warrants the quotation marks). He wanted to skin the snake after she died. He's done it before, never successfully preserving the skin because he is an idiot who can't even read an instruction manual, but this time it really was ridiculous. He should not be allowed to keep the skin after NOT taking care of the animal while she was alive. He want to put it on display in the museum! How disrespectful is that to the poor snake! Let her rest in peace. But I really can't expect much from a guy who likes to go hunting. Ponder that for a second, someone who works at a wild animal rehabilitation facility likes to go shooting wild animals on his free time.
The hypocrisy is overwhelming.

Finally my sister won. Her skin will not be a trophy for the person who failed to take care of her. Some justice exists in the world.

Hope

So, there is a chance I might be "acquiring" another snake. There is a debate happening at the wildlife center my sister works at. The carpet python that I mentioned a while ago, the one with neurological problems, is not being taken care of. The reptile expert who examined her prescribed three weeks of daily walks in the sun, to see if that would tempt her to eat. She has not eaten in about 20 weeks. The moron who runs the reptile department, who is not a herpetologist and who is probably in his mid 20s but with the brain of a 10-year old, is NOT following doctor's orders.
My sister called me yesterday while she was at work, because the poor python is not doing well at all. She took her out to walk, the first time in weeks that the snake had seen sunlight, and she said it was horrible to see. She couldn't find which way was up, and she couldn't adjust her body to walk correctly. I was and still am furious. First of all, it is not any one's job but his to take her out walking. That is what he gets paid for, for the love of the Gods. The poor animal is close to dying from starvation, and the person who is in charge of her is being disgustingly cavalier with her health.
There was a meeting with the person who is pretty much the boss of the facility, and my sister and her coworkers brought up the fact that I'd be completely willing to take her. They were debating whether to euthanize her because she's not showing improvement, but if she's not being given the care she needs, how can she get better? This isn't rocket science, people.
I am more than willing to walk her, like I do with Barbossa, and to sit dangling a mouse in front of her face for an hour, if need be. There are a million things I can try to get some calories in her, but I need the snake to be here, in a place where no one is bugging her, and where I can control the environment, including humidity, temperature, light/dark cycle, etc.
I am also willing to "return" her, if and when she starts eating. If they want her back, which I doubt.
They're going to talk about it tomorrow again, so we'll see what happens. I am hopeful, and I am sending all my positive energies so they'll make the right decision and give her a chance to survive.

Stranger's Snakes

Yesterday I went to help at the wildlife center my sister works at. Last week, a reptile (among other things) expert went to the center to check up on the animals and he found some of the snakes in appalling conditions. He actually used those words. One of the snakes, a carpet python with neurological problems, was one of these unfortunate babies. She has not eaten in 19 weeks and she is getting dangerously close to being euthanized. The vet said she needs to be taken outside, to exercise a bit and to get sunlight, but the person in charge of the reptiles in the center is a bit of a loser so it falls to other people to do HIS work. I wanted to go yesterday and help a bit with these poor animals. We took the carpet python out and let her walk around for quite a bit. I was actually impressed at how much better she was doing. I had seen her a few months ago, when I was volunteering at the center every Saturday, and the last time she was still struggling to maintain her head straight. The problem she has is neurological, like I said, so she doesn't know which way her head is facing. But yesterday she moved almost normally. I think as long as they continue to take her out on a regular basis she'll get the urge to eat again.
We also had to put a big Burmese python to soak, becaus ehe has some sores on his body. He is huge, but pretty tame so it's not dangerous to grab him or carry him. He behaved like a little ophidian angel. The only problem with grabbing him is his cage-mate, a female Burmese python who has quite a temper. She also just laid eggs, which does not improve her patience with humans.

I saw also a little orphan duckling that someone brought in which was quite possibly the cutest thing that ever quacked. There was nothing wrong with him, other than being an orphan, so they'll send him to live at a duck farm with other duckies. He'll be happy.

I was happy to see the snakes (and all the other animals) at the center. Hopefully the next time I'm back the carpet python will still be there, preferably with a full belly.