Day 161/365 Snakes and Karma

Being a homeschooler means encouraging your child to explore their interests, wherever they might take them. Sometimes this backfires on you, and they meet someone at the science museum, who turns them on to having a ball python. Then, their interests end up at the top of the steps, in their room, in a locking tank.

(Personally, I am convinced this is the universe repaying me with its warped twisted idea of karma, just because I killed that black snake earlier this summer, but whatever....)

So this is Grendel (yes, named after the "monster" in Beowulf - we have a running joke in our house about Beowulf). He (or she, we're not sure yet) is a baby ball python -born in captivity- about 14" long - a deep luminescent black, with coppery designs.

After all the researching, shopping, looking, and convincing Grandma it was okay - Grendel has spent almost all of his time hiding inside his little house. Much ado about nothing.

Then we found out that he was moody and cranky because he was in the middle of shedding.

Now, he's feeling much better, and has come out to explore his tank, and to pose for his closeup.

He actually has a sortof of Mona Lisa smile. He's a baby so he has no teeth. His preferred meals are "pinks", frozen baby mice that sortof look like plastic toys that used to come in gumball machines (probably dating myself here).

The reason his breed are called "ball pythons" is because when they are stressed or scared, they curl themselves into a ball, hiding their heads, until the danger goes away (think of it as crawling under the covers). As near as I can tell, they are more afraid of us than we are of them.

When he grows up, in 4-5 years, he'll be somewhere between 5-6 feet. He'll need a bigger tank.

And probably something bigger to hang on.