dmmetler... Help.. Snake....

[jennynd]

I remember I saw numerous posts about your DD's snakes obsession ... Apparently, my DD has it too. She asked to stop by pet store to check out snakes every week. And instead of asking barbies and stuff animal,,, she wants those plastic snakes..

 

Now, I am Afraid of snakes. I hate those thing, and I think they are gross. But I agree to let DD has one because quite frankly, I am tired of going to pet store every week. But can you help me understand what is involved to have a snake home. How old do you think that a kid can take care of a snake by herself. ( I do not want to be anywhere close to a snake) . Do you think a 6 yo can handle it? ( it will be her b-day present)

[AmyontheFarm]

Will you be able to stay in the house with your sanity, when your child comes to you and confesses she can't find the snake?  I would have to run from the house and not come back until someone showed me it through the window.  Yes, in honesty.  I would abandon my children and leave them behind in the house and I would run far away.  Judge me if you wish, but snakes and I don't exist on friendly terms.

 

How will you handle this situation?

[Lara in Colo]

I let them have a snake..... in the summer...... for only two weeks at a time..... then they have to let it go.

Two weeks is enough for them to get tired of finding food and cleaning the cage etc...

 

Then about three -4 weeks later they find another one..... wash & repeat

[Danielle1746]

My son got his first corn snake 2 yrs ago at age 10.  He was definitely not able to take care of the snake without help.  I had to continually show him how to find the snake in the tank without scaring it/getting himself bitten, how to handle it gently and safely, and how to prep the mouse (we feed frozen/thawed, not live) and feed it to the snake.  I can not imagine him learning how to do that on his own without me there closely supervising and being hands on at times.  I certainly can't see a 6 yr old being able to do it, especially if they aren't already used to doing it. 

 

And like AmyontheFarm mentioned, we did lose the snake.  Twice.  The first time, I found it after about 2 or 3 weeks.  (I went looking for it.  I wasn't surprised by it.)  The second time, we never found it.  But we did find a snake skin behind the dishwasher about 6 months later.  We got another corn snake a year ago.  My son pretty much takes care of it all on his own now (other than me reminding him to do so), but he is 12 now and has 18 months of snake handling under his belt.

 

But regardless of the type of pet or the age/experience level of the child, I would never suggest getting a pet for a child that you aren't ready and willing to completely care for yourself.

[....]

My son is really into snakes, too.  He has a really colorful corn snake that we bought him at a Herp show when he was 6 (he's now 11).  He's able to care for the entire thing himself.  I usually have nothing to do with it.  They're actually very easy to take care of (compared to a dog, etc).  You need:

 

1.  A good snake habitat with a lock on top.  They are VERY smart and ours has escaped a couple of times now.  They figure out how to push the key up with their heads and scoot the top back to get out.

2.  Bedding - we've used all kinds - you can look around at the pet store at reptile bedding

3.  Hide-outs - you can buy those, too.  My son has a long branch with fake leaves in his and the snake climbs on that sometimes.  My son has put 3 hiding places in the tank, so the snake just picks one.  

4.  Heating pad or something similar - our gecko has a heat lamp (that he sunbathes under), but the snake has done well with just a reptile heating pad that we put under the tank (I think it's on the outside of the glass- I'll have to ask my son).

5.  Water dish - yeah, they drink out of it and it's weird - also found at the pet store

 

That's all for off the top of my head.  My son feeds ours frozen mice (you have to thaw it first).  We have fed him live mice before, but one of my daughters would get absolutely hysterical when we did that.  So, to save her sanity and her relationship with her brother, we switched to frozen mice.  

We bring the snake out periodically to hold and let him *ahem* slither around for awhile.  The boy next door likes to hold the snake when he comes over.  *shrug*  Oh, one thing, you have to be VERY careful with reptiles and germs.  They can carry salmonella (I think it's salmonella) and some other stuff, so I make them wash their hands like crazy when they're finished handling the snake and geckos.  Young kids can get sick handling reptiles.  

 

About the snake escaping.  One time, my son looked at his cage and saw evidence of a jail-break.  My son was crying his eyes out and begging me to find the snake.  So...I went from room to room looking EVERYWHERE and then shutting the doors as I left.  I posted guards (*ahem* kids) at different points in the house to keep a look-out for the snake.  After tearing through half the house (and canceling school for the day), I finally found the snake at the bottom of our recycle bin.  Yep.  He would've been taken out with the recycling.  That snake never thanked me.  The second time he escaped, no one knew. I was getting out of the shower and drying off.  I saw this perfectly-straight red thing on the floor.  I thought maybe the little girls had left a plastic toy snake on the floor.  I reached down to pick it up and it moved.  I have no idea why it was just sitting there perfectly still in a straight line.  I also didn't "recognize" the darn snake right away.  Maybe because I wasn't expecting him to be hanging out in the bathroom with me while I showered. It was weird.  

 

We have a tarantula and geckos, too.  If snakes are too scary, leopard geckos make really good pets, too.  We've had our leopard gecko for 6 years now.  They're very easy to take care of.

 

Good luck!!   :tongue_smilie:  

[jennynd]

oh boy.. I guess that is a bad bad idea then. If the sanke ever escape, I will have to abandom my house and kids too.. It does seem too much for a 6 yo.. Scratch that idea and we will keep visiting the pet store then.

Thank you all

[anneinco]

My fear of snakes is not that bed... I don't think. I grew up with my sister having a snake, that did escape at at least once when it was at home, and a couple times when it was with her at college... the last time, she never found him... I remembering finding him (when looking) at home, but I also remember running off and making some one else handle him.

 

My daughter has mentioned wanting a snake or a rat or a... So far I have put a stop to that lol...

[Dmmetler]

If you want to be mean, I required that my DD show me that she knew what a snake required before she could get one. I didn't think she'd do it, but she eventually presented us with a pretty lengthy proposal comparing the care needs of several snake species, with an estimated budget for yearly expenses, what she felt she could be responsible for, and what she knew she'd need help with. It was the biggest piece of writing I'd ever seen her do up to that point, and certainly the most involved research effort I'd seen.

 

My suggestion on a pet snake

 

1) do NOT get a baby snake or a pet store snake. (the two go together). Babies are fragile, more difficult to care for, often difficult to get to feed reliably, and escape quite easily. An older snake that is used to being handled is a much better pet for a child. In our case, both our snakes came from households where a child had gotten a pet snake and eventually outgrown it (or, in one case, left home to a situation that they couldn't take the animal with them). Both of our snakes came from people in the local homeschool group who knew my DD was interested in snakes and offered them to me, but there are rescues and shelters that get snakes all the time. I could probably adopt a snake a month if I wanted to do so (I don't let DD know about that!) None of our snakes have escaped, and I mostly attribute that to them being old enough and mature enough that they don't see the point-they know that it's warm and safe where they are, and that food will appear, so why bother? The other big advantage of adopting an older snake is that most pet snakes have lifespans of 20+ years, which means the snake WILL still be around when your DD goes to college. If you get a snake that's on it's 2nd (or as is the case for one of ours) 3rd child, you're farther into that lifespan, but the pet is probably still going to be around long enough to not have to deal with a dead pet and a young child.

 

2) Rodent eaters are easier to manage than insect eaters.We have both (although our insect eaters are amphibians), and insectivorous animals require live prey, while most rodent eaters will take pre-killed mice (and you don't want one that has to feed live). Many lizards take dozens of insects at a feed, and feed several times a week or daily, and that gets expensive fast at $.10/cricket, so unless you want to breed your own crickets (which we do in the summer) or dubia roaches (easier to manage than crickets, but my husband refuses to have any sort of roach in the house). Insects escape, too, and there's nothing more annoying than having an escaped cricket chirping right where you can't reach it when you're trying to sleep. The best way to buy rodents is in bulk, either by finding someone who is ordering via mail and piggybacking on their order, or by going to an expo and buying there. It's not worth paying shipping for one snake who only eats a mouse a week or a rat every 2 weeks. You can easily get three mice/rats at an expo for the price of one at a pet store. We have a shelf in our freezer dedicated only to snake food, and specific green containers that are only used for thawing snake food. Warn anyone who is visiting your house and might open the freezer. Most people are a little surprised to see a line up of rats, neatly wrapped.

 

 

3) Snakes require a temperature gradient to thermoregulate. That means that any snake is going to require it's own electrical outlet for the under the tank heater. Depending on your climate and how cold you keep your house in winter, you may need more than one. In my climate, we also run humidifiers for the snakes in the winter because it's so dry that the poor things can't easily shed. Each snake has it's own care needs. The easiest species to care for are going to be US natives, but they may or may not be legal in your state (in most, you cannot legally own species native to the state or such species are restricted).
 

4) As far as what species-Check adult size. All babies are small and cute, but there's a real range as to how big they are when they grow up. Pet snakes can range from a couple of feet or less (some of the smaller boas, like Sand boas and rubber boas, male Hognose) to 10 feet plus (red-tail boas), Colubrids (corn snakes, milk snakes, rat snakes, king snakes) are thinner bodied and lighter in weight than a boid of a similar length (Ball pythons, Children's pythons, small boas).

 

Just as some dog/cat breeds are naturally more relaxed and calmer than others, some snake species are calmer than others-corn snakes rarely bite or musk, but milk and king snakes, while very similar, have a reputation for being more aggressive and less easily handled.  Most colubrids are more active and curious, so they're easier to watch once they get out of the scared baby stage. Ball pythons are generally easy to handle, but can become stressed very, very easily and refuse to eat if handled too much, and usually don't move much during the day. Kenyan Sand Boas, Rubber Boas, and Rosy Boas are all easy to handle and calm, but you never see them in the tanks because they live underground, so they can be pretty boring pets. Hognose can be amazing display snakes, because they have all those cool bluff and threat displays, but a hoggie that's a good display snake isn't going to be good to handle.

 

Check care requirements and feeding requirements. This is less of an issue if you adopt an adult, because an adult has to have been eating SOMETHING to survive long enough to become an adult, but a baby ball python or hognose can easily become a complete headache in getting it to feed. Ball pythons will go on feeding strikes if the air is too cold, if the tank is too warm, if the tank is too open, if they're handled to much, or simply because it's breeding season in Northern Africa, even though the nearest female ball python is at a pet store 5 miles away, Feeding strikes, even among adults, of several months aren't uncommon. Hognose are amphibian eaters in the wild, and often young ones, especially will turn down food because their instincts don't tell them that a mouse is food. Corn snakes, king snakes, and milk snakes rarely pass up a meal unless they're shedding (or, for a female, laying eggs).

 

 

5) The exoterra tanks with front opening doors and a clip latch are much easier for a child to handle on their own. A tank of sufficient size (and for almost any pet snake, you're looking at a 20-40 gallon tank size minimum for an adult) is going to be too high for most children to reach into to manage). You want a latching or sliding cover. Anything that lifts off, a snake can push up, and those little metal clips aren't going to be sufficient. If you use a screen cover, I recommend a band of double sided velcro all the way around the tank at both ends (from Home Depot or a similar store). Set ground rules on handling. Ours is that the snake should not be handled unless it's out on it's own accord, and if the snake shows signs of getting nervous or upset, the snake goes back. I didn't allow DD to handle the corn snake for a year by herself until I trusted her with it, which was close to age 9, and I do not allow her to handle the ball python yet by herself. Snakes do not come out with friends over unless a) the friend asks and b) the friend's parent says it's OK, and C)Mommy or daddy supervises. All snake handling or snake care is followed by washing hands thoroughly.

 

As far as feeding, thawing a mouse requires pulling it from the freezer, thawing it in hot water, and then pouring really hot water over it to heat it up right before giving it to the snake. We feed in the tank, by putting the mouse in a plastic bin or on a paper plate and putting the whole thing in the tank. DD can use my coffee maker to create hot water.  For a corn, that's enough-they'll come find it. For the ball, we have to  make the mouse move using a set of feeding tongs so he sees it, before we can put it down. I allow DD to feed the corn on her own. For the ball, I'm still checking to make sure the rat is thoroughly thawed and doing the dancing myself, because he has a top opening tank and DD really can't get in there easily on her own-and also because she tends to be a bit aggressive and scares the snake-a rat swinging into his face sends the poor guy into hiding, even when he was acting hungry right before. You will have to be involved in the process for a 6 year old at first.

 

 

6) If you look online, you can find lots of examples of the logs that professional breeders and researchers keep on captive snakes and animals. I have my DD do the same. I also printed out reptile checklists used by veterinarians, and my DD uses them both with her plastic herpetarium (she has a bedroom full of set up habitats in gladware containers, each containing a plastic reptile or amphibian, with her modeling as closely as possible what the animal needs) and for her real snakes periodically. She's learned a lot about data collection and recording data that way, so it's a long-term project. I think this is a good way to make it real for the child, and also to help keep the snake HER responsibility, not a family pet that you care for and she occasionally plays with. You can either go pencil-paper for this (which is what I do), or download an app if you want to go digital (you can even get one that lets you give each snake a QR tag and then records everything under that QR tag number). Weighing and measuring a snake is another data set that you can keep (for a smaller snake, a kitchen scale with a tare function works well-weigh a rubbermaid or gladware box with tare on, then put the snake in a box. For measuring, take a photo of the snake next to a ruler, and then use the serpwidgets app online, which lets you use the relative links of the ruler and draw a line following the snake's curves, and then calculates the length). Have your child keep cost records on the snake's care. There is a LOT of learning you can get out of a pet reptile, and especially if a child wants to be a herpetologist or  a zookeeper or a pet store owner, or a breeder (my DD has suggested all of those careers), it's valuable.

 

 

For a corn snake, Bill and Kathy Love's book is wonderful. There is also an excellent forum at Cornsnakes.com. I've actually found them helpful for the ball python as well-that group is very supportive and understanding of beginner's questions, while others often aren't.

 

Reptiles magazine is very kid-friendly, although they recently revamped their website, and DD is disappointed at some of the things that vanished. They're actually running a contest for reptile-related kid art until Jan 27.

 

My suggestions on raising a herpetologist:

 

As far as other herp activities, again, you're going to have to be involved. Most herp groups I've contacted, both live and online, have no trouble with an interested child participating, but I have to be there. ON the books, I'm the member. And be aware that herptoculturalists (reptile breeders) talk about, well, breeding. Sometimes their jokes and topics of conversation veer away from snakes. So, unless you want to explain why a female breeder might want a boyfriend who is "het for python, not corn", you may want to steer clear of breeding circles. Rescue groups and field study groups often are a little less likely to veer into discussions that you might not want to have if you haven't discussed human reproduction yet (although, I will say that DD hearing repeatedly about the "rule of 3" for breeding corn snakes-that you don't breed a snake until she's 3 years old, 3 feet long, and 300 grams, and that the only way to protect your younger snakes is to keep them apart led her to decide that humans shouldn't have TeA until age 30 because that way they're not breeding too young. I'll happily let her stick with that belief for awhile yet...) If you are on facebook, you can find a lot of good reptile-related pages that will post pictures and links to articles that you can then choose to share with your DD. Ones I recommend are Repticon (lots of opportunities to see pics of pet reptiles and share your own, Venomous Reptiles (group)-mostly pictures of venomous at zoos and research facilities and in the wild, The Kentucky Reptile Zoo (pics and videos of venomous), and two cute ones-Frank (the lizard on the TV show Jessie) and Twinkie (the largest albino python in captivity) both have their own facebook pages with photos and captions "from the animal's POV". Both animals are at a facility in CA that specializes in providing animals and trainers for TV and movies, and both are education animals used for children, so the pages are very kid-friendly.

 

One resource I recommend for kids who love venomous snakes is the Kentucky Reptile Zoo. This is a research and venom production program in Slade KY. One thing they have available is an adoption program, where your DC can, for a donation, adopt a snake for a year (that stays at the zoo). They send you a certificate and a photo of your snake, and they also post photos and videos almost daily on their facebook page of their animals, venom extractions, and care requirements. If you go there (we did for DD's 9th birthday), they will take you on a tour to visit all their snakes, and your snake will have your name on it's tank as it's sponsor. When we were there, DD got the private attention of a very nice graduate student, got to pet a (non-venomous, but endangered) Dumeril's boa, got to watch them handle and work with a king cobra, and got to bring home a king cobra shed skin and a horned viper shed skin to look at under her microscope. I think she was ready to sign up as an intern then-except that they don't take interns until at least their Jr. year of college, with most interns being grad students.

 

I'd also check with local colleges and universities. Even if they don't have a herpetology grad program, they may well have a bio professor who is a herpetologist and does field research. My DD started auditing herpetology classes at age 8 and started doing field work with a bio professor/herpetologist at age 8 1/2. She also discovered that we have a pretty thriving population of Rough Earth Snakes in our back yard (tiny snakes that eat insect larvae and look like worms. I'm guessing I'd seen them before and never even realized they were snakes), which are common in our region, but nowhere else in the state. She is doing, with the help of a mentor, a project on habitat preferences using these snakes (basically, why do we see them by that part of the sidewalk and under the shed, but not 10 feet away). She's learning a lot about record keeping and logging data. It's a major learning experience for her. And for me.

 

Check local sources and online sites for citizen science projects related to reptiles and amphibians. The Center for Snake Conservation does a snake count yearly, where you simply log snakes you see in the wild. That was actually how DD discovered our Earth snakes-she followed their instructions to find snakes (and I assumed she wouldn't in our backyard), and she found that they were indeed there. You can read online in advance on where venomous in your area live so you can avoid those sort of conditions ;). We've also participated in salamander studies in the Great Smokies (this is an ongoing project that, during season, there are several opportunities to do each week), and recorded frog calls. Most of these groups are glad to accept a child-or they're things you do on your own and no one KNOWS the researcher is still in elementary school.

 

 

My DD quickly exhausted kids' books and started finding inaccuracies in them, and field guides designed for non-professionals haven't been much better. Books designed for professionals, like the Society for Amphibian and Reptile Research and those published by University presses have been better. One of her favorite birthday gifts is a giant study on the reptiles and amphibians of Arkansas, autographed by one of the authors/editors, who is a professor at the University of Arkansas. Don't be scared off by books above a child's reading level if they have good photos and good captions.

 

If you want a conservation group that is kid-appropriate, Save the Frogs, while not reptiles specific, is a good one. Kerry Kriger runs a good organization, does a lot of webinars, and focuses on children in a lot of their events. My daughter and I maintain a "kids" page for the Save the Frogs Pinterest, and we host a yearly Save the Frogs education event for our local homeschool group, where she presents information on frog life cycles and habitats, dissection alternatives, and does frog-crafts and art. Save the Frogs runs yearly Poetry and Art contests with small prizes and uses many of the resulting products in their marketing, which is a real thrill for a young herp-crazy kid when her picture is used in a banner ad or digital post-card.

 

Good luck!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jennynd]

I don't think I can do it.. It is a lot more involved than I can handle. I don't think I can defrost the dead rat with hot water and make it dance in front of the snake.. I didn't even think that far.. I thought there maybe some sort of snake food.. I think we definitely just gonna go visit the pet store every week until DD get older... Thank you ,Evanthe, Dmmetler for such a thorough explanation and ideas.

[jennynd]

Double post

[Starr]

I think it's the rare school age child that can care for a pet without help. 

[Dmmetler]

You may want to check with groups near you and see if anyone nearby has a collection that they could use help with. I know my DD will happily volunteer to clean tanks just to be near snakes, and that's one way she's gotten experience with a wider range of species. That might help her get her snake fix in-especially since most pet stores don't actually let you see the animals up close or hold them. If you lived near me, your DD could happily participate in my DD's research efforts and visit our snakes ;). If you live in an area with a reptile rescue, that would be a great place to ask.

 

Unfortunately, efforts to make a snake food that doesn't look like dead animals has failed so far. Snakes are still essentially wild animals, even in captivity, and all their instincts tell them that if it's not live, it's not good food. They can be tricked, if you start with a baby, into taking dead prey, but that's about as far as it goes. There are a few non-rodent eating snakes, but generally they're not good pets, especially not for beginners (insect eaters tend to be very small, fragile, and prone to escape-and often are wild caught and refuse to eat in captivity, because they generally don't breed in captivity, fish eaters require a lot of water as well as land, tend to be prone to bite and aggressive, and often smell like dead fish.) The easy to care for snakes are things like corn snakes, rosy boas, ball pythons and the like, and they're all mouse or rat eaters.

 

 

Herptoculture is also really in it's infancy. Until about 20 years ago, almost all snakes sold as pets were wild caught, and most of the effort so far has simply been to make breeding viable and establish the populations, as well as breeding for colors. Even the longest established lines are only 5-6 generations from the wild, and many lines are only 2-3. There is starting to be work to truly domesticate corn snakes (breeding for personality and size as well as for color), and I'm sure part of that will be eventually breeding snakes that will eat something that doesn't look like a mouse-but it's way in the future.