Snake doesn't like me?

[NavyxWife]

I have a 6 month old ball python... I've had him since he was a baby. It really is a love/hate relationship. He was great when I first got him & he truely is my baby boy since he was mine & my husband's first pet together... But he seems not to like me. Lashes out at me when my husband takes him out for no reason. I admit, it was my fault once because I moved to fast for him but I always watch my movements now. We feed him in a seperate tank so he doesn't think it's feeding time every time a hand goes into his tank. I was never nervous at picking him up before & I know they sense that energy but with my husband leaving for deployment very soon, I'm going to need to take care of him & pick him up... any advice? I already know I need to be calm & I will try my hardest.

This is Striker

 

[Aleu]

II'm a tad unclear about your situation, so I'm going to ask some questions and give you some info on the chance it might be helpful for you. There is always a reason for a previously docile snake to start striking and biting and I can try to help you determine that.


First, some info on behavior.........

Snakes give us signs that they are going to bite or strike. You need to learn to read this body language to determine if he's just in a bad mood one day and doesn't want to be touched (set yourself up for success), if he is just bluffing, or if there is something in your husbandry or habitat that might be amiss and causing him stress. This will make things better for both of you and result in less striking and biting. I tried to type out some basic snake behavior below. I can even try to make a youtube video for you of each behavior.

Signs of an Impending Strike or Bite:
-hissing (in context as this can sometimes be bluffing)
-"S-ing" up the neck
-Rapid breathing
-Throat puffing
-anchoring their tail to something and tensing their body....this can be very suttle...but it means they are loading up for a strike. do not give them a target at this time.

Bluffing:
-Hissing
-sometimes throat puffing

Fear (doesn't mean they will strike or bite):
-"s-ing up"
-whippy or jerky movements trying to get away.
-hissing


Now the questions that will allow me to help you more easily....
-did you ever drop him?

-WHEN does he strike at you? Is it just when your husband is holding him, or when you go to take him out of the cage? I couldn't tell by what you were saying.

-how often are you feeding him?

-Do you have a water bowl big enough for him to soak in? Does he have a humid hide? What is the humidity?

-Do you have plenty of hiding places he can squeeze into to feel secure?-- Ball pythons do best when they are squished into hiding spots. In the wild, they live in rat holes and small burrows just big enough for them to squeeze into.

-how big is your snake tank? -- BP's don't do as well in large enclosures with more than 1 side exposed to 'the world', aka your house. This stresses them out and makes them act more defensively.

-How often do you handle him? --- Excessive handling can cause a snake to become stressed and react accordingly.

-How soon after feeding do you handle him?

 

[NavyxWife]

He never does any of those things except for the tail raising, which I always back off from when he does that.

I personally have never dropped him but my husband has once, into his tank because he wasn't allowing him to pick him up to put him back in his tank after feeding. We wait about 15 minutes after he's eaten to handle him. But he started the biting before that.

We feed him once a week. 2-3 mice.

He has a large, deep water bowl on one side of the tank. Humidity stays about 50-60.

He does have his hide spot. He has a tree, which he is coiled in the majority of the day but comes out at night.

He's in a 29 gal tank in the corner of the living room. One side of the tank is at the wall so it's closed off to anything. The other side is open but it's facing our tv stand so it stays relatively dark. The back side has a wallpaper & the front is open. It is next to my bearded dragon tank but the side of my beardie's tank is closed off so they can't see eachother.

When he was younger, he was handled 3-4 times a week to get him used to us & he didn't mind it at all. He would wrap himself around our arms, he even liked to go under my husband's shirt & stick his head out by his neck. He was very calm then. Now he's handled about 1-2 times a week & still crawls all over my husband & I'll hold him for awhile when he's out. I can hold him fine & am okay with that, just not getting him out of his tank & feeding tank.

 

[Floof]

I'm going to input my thoughts on one piece of your last post, and leave the rest of it alone... Aleu is definitely more BP-knowledgeable than I am, and way more capable of properly diagnosing your behavior problems.

One big, big, big cause of behavior problems that may well have a lot (though not necessarily all) to do with your issues is that you're feeding him WAAAY too soon after handling! Snakes need to be given at LEAST two days (48 hours) to digest their meal before you handle them. It's a wonder Striker hasn't regurgitated, being handled only 15 minutes after eating!!! (or has he??)

One suggestion when it comes to putting him back in his enclosure after feeding, if it makes you nervous, is to just gently pour/dump him back in the enclosure after feeding. This is plenty easy if you just use a sterilite tub, smaller than the opening of the enclosure. Another option is to just feed in the enclosure. As long as you're getting in the enclosure as long as you already should (changing water, spot cleaning, handling, etc), he shouldn't get any sort of complex about mistaking fingers for food. Also helpful in preventing such fingers=food behavior is to switch him to frozen/thaw if you're feeding live. Some snakes, it doesn't make a difference, but other snakes will get much more relaxed and less likely to feeding response-bite if they aren't used to food that moves. Frozen/thaw is better, anyway, since it eliminates the chance of injury (dead prey can't bite back) and parasites (the freezing process kills any parasites that would otherwise infect the snake).

I have noticed in your posts (not just here, but elsewhere in this forum) that your husbandry could sure use a going-over. The care sheet and members at http://ball-pythons.net should be able to help you get off on the right foot.

Hope this all is of help to you. Good luck.

 

[NavyxWife]

Well, we only pick him up after feeding to put him back in his tank. We have several books on them & they all tell us that if you're just putting the snake back in it's tank after feeding, it's fine. We always handle him very gentley afterwards. And no, he has never regurgitated.

As for the thawed mice, we tried that awhile ago... he refuses to eat them.

 

[Floof]

Sorry, I must have misread that part of your post. It's good to hear you only handle him to put him back in his tank. That form of handling is a given for people who choose to feed in a separate enclosure, and you can't be faulted for that few seconds of quick, gentle movement.

Almost every snake can be successfully switched to frozen/thaw with enough effort. The exceptions are very, very few and far between. If you take things slow, even with a stubborn ball python, the switch can be made. That is, if you want to make the switch; in the end, it's your decision, just like everything else, and all we can do here is give you our best advice and hope you follow it.

How hard did you try to switch him? Did you go through a process, or did you just thaw out a mouse and put it in front of him? The latter only really works for snakes with extreme feeding responses, like most king snakes and many rat snakes. For something like a ball python, most of whom are famously against just about any kind of change, you need to go through somewhat of a process.

If you want to make the switch to frozen/thaw, a basic path to go through for stubborn snakes would be to make the switch slowly. Take steps, not leaps. If you don't already stun your prey, start stunning it so it's less active (and less liable to bite). Once he's taking stunned reliably, move on to pre-killed. Euthanize the prey immediately before you feed it, so it's still warm and, often, still twitching. Once he's taking pre-killed reliably, you can start moving on to frozen/thaw, starting with super-heated prey items (warm up in hot, but not boiling, water after thawing), and the "zombie mouse dance" (take the prey item up with tongs and wiggle it around like a live rodent)... It can be done. It just takes some time.

Another thing--if the snake refuses to accept the new method one week, wait a week and try it again. Going a few weeks without food isn't going to hurt him... For a well-fed ball python, going without food for a few months won't hurt him.

Sorry... Got a little off-topic from the original point of the thread. In any case, I hope this all is helpful to you.

 

[NavyxWife]

I'm okay with giving him live mice, he seems to like that more. He refused to eat anything that doesn't move so we did try moving the pinky mouse with one of those long tongs & he's more interested in attacking that instead of the mouse.

Last Tuesday was the first day of feeding him since my husband left & it didn't go too well. He was in a difficult position for me to pick him up so he wouldn't let me get him... Just threw the mouse in there because I didn't want to bother & my husband can have the pleasure of breaking him back into handeling him when he comes home. But he usually eats 2-3 mice every week. This week he only ate the one so now I'm taking care of a very lucky mouse.

 

[Floof]

Okay, whether you feed live is your choice. I'm still of the strong opinion that you're putting your snake at serious risk for injury by not at least trying to switch, but there's no point in me trying to lecture you about it if you aren't going to listen. I strongly urge you to at least stun the mice. They'll still stumble about. They'll just be too stunned to bite... Feeding live is DANGEROUS, there's no getting around that, and you need to at least take precautions if you aren't going to even try to switch. Anything less is incredibly irresponsible.

However, you should NOT just dump a live mouse in his enclosure and leave him to it. That is what leads to utter disaster. Here's a graphic example of what can happen if you leave a live rodent in with a ball python that doesn't feel like eating... http://iherp.com/Public/Blog/Detail.aspx?uid=39770 NOT pretty.

To give you a beardie-based comparison you might understand better... Feeding live and not expecting your snake to get seriously injured is like housing two hatchling beardies together and being surprised when one bites off the other's tail, or leaving your bearded dragon in with 100 crickets for a couple days and not expecting it to get bit if not eaten alive. It's a guaranteed injury, and, for more than 99% of snakes, an AVOIDABLE risk.

Anyway, feeding in the enclosure isn't an issue, but you have to consider you'll have to get in the enclosure to change water and spot clean, and remove him from the enclosure to do thorough cleans regularly. It doesn't matter if you decide to feed in the enclosure or not... You still have to get over this fear of handling the snake.

The bites in the past were probably because you made some handling mistake because you were nervous--moved too fast, grabbed the snake wrong, handled it roughly, dropped it... Even putting the snake away just because it strikes at you during a handling session can condition it to bite whenever it wants to be put down. I'm sure if you suck it up and just pick it up, it won't be any problem. Ball pythons are incredibly docile and reluctant to bite. A little bit of common sense and, in your case, courage, and you'll be able to handle it without so much as a hiss or an s-coil.

Don't hesitate when you go to pick it up. Don't move so slow you end up chickening out, but don't just throw your hand in there and grab. Scoop from below. These things will help you avoid getting nipped at if, indeed, the ball python is uncomfortable with you handling it. If you approach it from the right angle, the chances of getting bit are slim to none.

If you can't get over this fear, find the snake a new home. It's for the best, for both you and the snake. Explain to your husband that, if you don't find it a more capable home, he's going to come back to a sick or dead snake because you just can't handle it. Sorry, but it's the ugly truth. You cannot, and I mean can NOT, keep a snake healthy or even alive without handling it at least sometimes. Trust me on this one. If he's an animal lover, your husband should be able to understand. As an animal lover, you should be able to understand what I'm saying.

 

[Floof]

By the way--pinky mice are WAY too small for any size ball python. Probably the reason he attacked the tongs and not the mouse was because he couldn't even see the mouse, due to it being so small. Even more so if you didn't heat it up in warm water so he could sense it with his heat pits. If you had tried, originally, with a more appropriately sized mouse hopper or RAT pinky, he probably would've taken it no problem. The harsh truth: your snake probably didn't refuse the mouse because it wasn't alive. It refused the mouse because it was TOO SMALL.

I believe I said this earlier, but I'll say it again since you don't appear to have listened to that piece of advice (or, really, any other piece of advice you've been given...). Go research ball python care. You need to. Start your search at http://ball-pythons.net. You owe it to the snake.