SSSSSSssssssnakes

Ryan took Chris (a good friend from the group) and I to a reptile show a couple weeks ago. They had all kinds of cool stuff...a whole bunch of bearded dragons, iguanas and geckos. There were also a few turtle breeders. They had a venomous reptile display...with rattlesnakes, copperheads, cottonmouths and the like. They all looked vicious and so mean. It was cool to be able to look at them so closely though. Of course, snake breeders were there too, and Bob Clark had an exhibit. Bob is THE GUY when it comes to snakes, especially large ones like the burmese and reticulated pythons. He breeds the normals morphs, but there are also really freaking cool ones....like leucistic (all color genes absent....so the snake is completely white, with black eyes) which looks pretty creepy. Also tiger, diamond, granite or patternless morphs to name a few, hybrids (crossovers between snake breeds) and many many others...all super expensive! Ryan was is heaven though. He spent most of the time by Bob's tables. Bob is a really nice guy (and he is from Oklahoma), so Ryan was talking with him about how he was having some trouble with the boas (Johnny and June) shedding. Bob told him he had his cages too dry, and gave him some tricks to how to make their sheds better and easier for them.

Well of course all the snakes Bob brought there were on sale. Did you guys know that Apollo (who in our unbiased opinion is the prettiest albino Burm we have seen yet) is from Bob? Anyways....Bob had some baby rainbows for sale too. Yes, i bet you guessed it, Ryan got them. But I think it was a pretty reasonable buy....he already had a the cage from when the burms were smaller, and these are SO small they will not outgrow is for a very long time. They can share a cage and by the time they are sexually mature for breeding, Johnny and June will be on the older end for that. Plus Ryan will most likely be settled someplace. Also, since they are from Bob Clark, we know that they will grow up to be beautiful snakes for breeding. It is hard to tell what their colors will be now, but Bob told us the father was a light orangey color and the mom was a deep red. I LOVE the deep red rainbows, they are absolutely gorgeous. So....here they are!

The boy is closest to the camera. You can see that he is a quite a bit lighter than the female. I do hope that she gets to be dark red!

They are so tiny!

Ryan has not named them yet. I think he wants to see what their personalities are like. The girl is a fiesty little thing though. She bit him already. I don't know that it is necessarily feistiness....probably more nervousness and trying to defend themselves. Rainbow boas are arboreal (tree-living) snakes, and they don't get very big. In the wild, they are prey to birds, monkeys, other snakes, etc. So they are naturally very wary and shy. Johnny and June are great...I think Johnny is a little sweetheart. So these little ones just need to be handled more.
But wait, I am not done! I went with Ryan to the pet store yesterday afternoon and they had all kinds of cool new things there. One was a blue (yes blue!) garter snake. He (I don't know if it is a he) is really pretty, and fast! The best thing is he eats fish. They guy said to just put some small feeder fish in the water bowl, and he will snatch them out of the water. Ryan still had an extra cage and the garter snake was really cheap....so Ryan got him. I just want to see him hunt the fish....that sounds like the coolest thing to me! I hope Ryan puts some branches in the cage so that Gemini (that's what Ryan named it... after a boss character whose level he couldn't beat on his Nintendo game when he was younger. He hated this at first because he couldn't beat him, but then he thought Gemini was the coolest "boss" and has liked the name ever since) can climb them and hunt the fish from above. It's pretty funny because now his living room really is like a reptile den.

Sage and Apollo

Here is a picture I took of Sage (brown, about 4 ft) and Apollo (yellow, 5.5 ft) a couple weeks ago. They are getting so big. Sage I will say is pretty fierce. His nickname for her is "hissy missy". But she is very obvious when she is mad, and when she is like that, it's best to leave her alone. I think Ryan will have his hands full with her when she is bigger. Apollo on the other hand is like a dog. Ryan lets him out and he just follows you around. He always has eating on his mind though, and oftentimes he will find his way over to the bathroom and hang out in the tub. He will just look out like, "Hey guys! I'm ready....lets do this!" He cracks me up. He really is very pretty...I wish the picture was a little better (and I think he was about to shed here, so his skin is a bit opaque) Most albinos have very little color and are mostly a blah pale yellow, or mostly white with some yellow blotches. But Apollo's pattern is very pronounced and he is a vibrant yellow.