Updates!

I promised myself that I wouldn't buy any more ball pythons (especially morphs) until I had my first clutch from Ember hatch out, whether that's next season as I'm planning or the season afterward, or the one after that. The idea was to make sure I've got this breeding thing down and that I'm committed to it before I go buying 10 snakes for breeding purposes and then losing interest some odd time later.

Point is, I couldn't do it. After my job situation stabilized and I was able to reliably make payments of a decent amount, I was able to justify to the little voice inside me that it wouldn't kill me to get another female. There was no other really good reason for buying another snake, other than I wanted her. Couldn't be happier though, I have one more female to add to the stable and I get a size comparison after having my original pair for a year! Without further ado, Nova the fire female:

I can't tell you how excited I am to watch this girl grow! Most ball python morphs darken as they age ("brown out" is the common term) but some do the opposite and their scales grow lighter as they shed. Fires combinations, hypos, and a select few others are in the mix. I'm excited to have a fire in the collection simply for the fact it's a co-dominant mutation, of which the super form is a white snake with black eyes (Black Eyed Leucistic or BEL is usually what they are called). Next year I'm planning on adding an axanthic and honeybee to the picture, and someday shooting for a firefly axanthic mojave makes me insanely excited. Insert your own mental image of a cackling genetic scientist here.

Speaking of future plans, I'm looking into adding a non-ball snake to the collection (or a few). At the moment I'm pretty set of getting a pair of  CBB Mandarin rat snakes. I'm not one who's crazy about colubrids, but I've loved those things since I saw a picture of them on the Pro-Exotics website when I was still in high school. The thought of getting some of my own completely left my mind when I started looking into getting my own snakes last year, seeing as the last time I'd looked (best guess is about 4 years ago now) they had been 2K a pair. The going rate now seems to be more $350-$300 now, which is more than affordable. What I'm fighting more is the fact I don't need any more snakes, I'm limited by resources and self control now.

What I want to avoid is a situation where I overload on pets and don't have time/motivation to actually spend time with them as pets. Burnout happens to the best of us, and the accusation of hoarding is something I have to consider as well. When I hear animal hoarding I think "compulsively acquiring more animals when you do not have the means to care for them", but it seems the rest of the world defines it as "you've got a f@#$ton of animals and it's not normal, who cares if you take good care of them". Irritating, definitely. Something I can change? Not at the moment. When I have the room to have my animals in racks/proper cages I'll be more comfortable getting more of the herps on my wishlist. As is, I've got two snakes in the bedroom, one on a kitchen dry goods shelf, one next to the office desk, two geckos on top of the piano, and some goldfish that happily live as a high maintenance decoration in the living room.

I'm just happy everyone is healthy, no emergencies or complications, and I'm able to have optimal environments for everyone even without a nice organized rack