The Snake Keeper Blog

Yes, it is really coming fast this year. It seems like this year went real fast. I always tell the kids that once you get past the holidays the tough part of the school year is over. I guess that is easy for me to say since I am not doing the school work. But I sure feel like it is the adults doing the work.

Well the wood arrived this morning for the framers. They did not mess around once it got here. The walls are all done and we are just waiting for the trusses to get here tomorrow and we will be ready for a framing inspection.

The finished slab.

The plan is to have a roof on this place by the weekend. Once that is done we can do everything on the inside under cover. These guys are the best framers around.

One long wall going up.

Look at them lift that wall into place. That is over 60 feet of wall. It impressed me to see these guys knock this part of the job out in one day.

It is cool to walk around inside of it now thinking of where everything is going to be. When you look at a slab it always looks smaller but once you get the walls into place you can really see what you have to work with for space.

Walls going up.

Things are looking good for the balls. They always seem to get the new stuff before us humans do though. Heck, ours had a cooler before we even had one on the house. But it seems to go like this, you take care of the snakes and they in return will take care of you.

Here is the Super Pastel I was telling you all about that is so cool we just had to hold him back this year. Colette just could not let this one go.

A very nice Super Pastel

I can not blame her it is really nice. It does not look quite this orange in person. Once the new building is done I will get some good pics. There is a special room just for photos in the new building. That will make things much nicer.

Everyone has been emailing asking how the breeding is going and what we are going to have so here are a few answers to those questions. Look at those stripes go!

stripe breeding a het stripe.

Yes I said stripes; those are two different male stripes breeding in these pics at the same time. I have been waiting years to see this happen.

Stripe breeding a pastel

So now we have two stud male stripes. It is about time!

How about this Chocolate Fade? You have to love seeing this going on in the cage. People have really taken a liking to this new unproven morph.

The chocolate fade.

We hope to get a few clutches from him this year. We think it will prove out. It has all the signs that it will, but who knows. The Coffee looked like a winner as well but we know how that one went.

Then there are the hypos. This Orange hypo is something to look at; can you see that orange in it? That is not Photo shopped or anything that is the real thing.

Orange hypos on the way!

Just amazing! Guess we will have some hypos this year by the way things are shaping up. They sure do sell fast as everyone found out this year.

Performing Animal Troup came by the other day; their facility is just down the street. We rent out snakes and rodents to them for the movies. Well they called to get some balls for a reality show again. This time it was for the executives who put on the show. I guess they were having a holiday party or something. So what they wanted is a ten gallon tank full of snakes. Well not full but enough so you could not see the bottom of the tank. The producer wanted corn snakes but we changed their minds on that one. So we gave them about eighteen 3-18 month old ball pythons to put in this tank. It looked great. Here is what they had to do. They put a marble in the bottom of the tank and then they had to reach in through the snakes and find the marble. Well the snakes were moving all over the place just as planned and many of the guests were intimidated just enough! What a bunch of light weights! Reality show executives that could not reach into a tank of snakes! Heck with the stuff they make people eat and do on that show you would think they could do anything! Well I wish it was going to be on TV so you could see it, but from what I was told it will not be.

Hey, if anyone in the So. Cal. area needs some live mice let me know. I have a few thousand I can spare right now. I know everyone probably has too many at this time of year. Well that is all for today’s news.