Moving snakes

2 corn snakes 1 king, 8 baby balls, 3 sub adult balls, 1 superdwarf, 1 jampea dwarf, 2 dwarf tigers 2 big balls and 1 old cantankerous wildcaught ball, 1 7 foot maybe dwarf reticulated....22 snakes but whose counting.

Packaged as-baby balls (in quarantine) and colubrids....(can't get python diseases)

sub adult and adult balls....

reticulated dwarf juveniles and queen Bette Davis gets to go alone.

That way if I have to move them out of the car etc, I only have to move 4 boxes-each snake is in its own pillowcase.

All went without a hitch, except for Molly, the razor girl tiger got loose and led me a merry chase and made me wish that I had bothered to fix the burnt out light bulb in the room. Of course she went around the room and right for the closet, and then straight up. I got her to wrap around the milk crates (I'm clever) got the crate out and then got her to wrap around my arm. She didn't want to let go and I didn't want her to have a worse experience than she'd already had, so I sat down and stuck my arm in the pillowcase and we just chilled until she relaxed a bit and then I gently pushed her off.

Not to be outdone, Tarzan, Molly's brother, charged out of his box and snapped at my leg. Then he stopped, as if he realized he doesn't act like that at all. I picked him up and he went quietly into his pillowcase-except for the part where he got his tail tangled up on the edge which meant I couldn't close the case. We untangled and he went peacefully, just like his usual self.

I'm going to rest a bit before I move Bette-she's the biggest and she can be the calmest but with all the others putting out stress pheremones (and Bernice not eating her rat which has the room quite ripe) I'm going to give us some chill time before we have a go.

The snake wranglers make it look so easy-but they are just dumping wild snakes in bags-I am trying to place mine gently in so as not to stress them out and it's a little bit different vibe.

Lessons learned:

Clear the room of any mice/rats

Move the retics FIRST-I know all the opening and closing of all the tanks made them think it was feeding time. A hyper ball is one thing, a hyper retic is a whole nother critter.

Andy Warhol update: Two adult mice will keep him quietly digesting for two weeks, but he was one hungry little man.