Royal Python

It's been getting colder around here, so I'm not super comfortable with letting Revy roam around on the cold floor anymore. Instead, I let her hang out on my plant shelf yesterday while spot-cleaning. Because of the grow-lights, the floors of the shelves get up to 40°C in the center - which is very much on the upper end of acceptable basking surface temps, but I'm okay with allowing it for 10-20mins.

And man does she seem into it! She curled up in a cozy spot after exploring the shelf, and when I put her on her perch to go back into her enclosure, she instead scooted right back to the plant shelf instead. I had to actually put her back straight into her enclosure after that, which I don't enjoy doing because it does take away agency, but I had places to be and couldn't leave her on the shelf unsupervised 🥲

In the evening, she was very adamant about being let out, and when I did she crawled right back to the plant shelf and from there to the floor. I kept putting her on her "go back home" perch and she kept insisting on going to the shelf instead, so again I had to put her back straight into the enclosure when I needed to head to sleep.. Revy spent the rest of the night sulking in front of the door lol

Original post here, image likely taken by Daniel Mead/DnH Royals.

Royals aren't exactly the most trainable snakes and Revy still isn't super comfy with moving very far, but she's great at orienting towards the target and did really well today 🥰 I'm very proud of her!

If you wanna know more about Target Training, check out Lori Torrini on Youtube! She's pioneering the whole concept, and really really knowledgeable about snake behavior and cooperative care 💕

There's been a noticeable change in her face shape in the past few weeks! She's around 440g and almost a year old now, so she's almost a subadult.

In comparison, here's what her face looked like just a few weeks ago:

The weird creature that steals her poop has now stolen part of her door (she was struggling to fit through it after her last meal)

The audacity!

They're this weird yellowish-blue and I think that's pretty neat

Revy's going into blue 🐱

She's really needing it too, her last shed was at around 240g bodyweight, now she's well above 330g and was starting to get some pretty visible scale spread.

Revy decided to dig on exactly the right spot, pulled on the cord to her temperature sensor and displaced it tonight. Now her terrarium is sitting at an uncomfortable 31.5°C ambient temperature on the hot side. The cold side is still okay at like 28°C, but it's slowly creeping up.

Wouldn't be a problem, if I wasn't 650km away on vacation. Or if I hadn't specifically decided against leaving a key to my apartment with a friend or neighbor because I didn't want to bother them. Completely my fault lol

Anyways, the flight back home is 100€ and the 10 hour bus drive back to my vacation spot is 50€. I wouldn't have bothered to go back, but this was literally the first night of the trip and I have 5 more days planned. I was visiting my fiance who I haven't seen in 2 months because he had to move across the country for work 🥲

update: the baby has been rescued! She seems perfectly fine and unbothered, although a bit warm to the touch.

update2: Man, she sure is out to worry me. I took her out to cool down while I adjust and recalibrate the sensor. When I let her back in, she crawled straight to her basking spot (32-35°C surface day temp, 28°C surface night temp) and stayed there until like 3am. Wth does that even mean??

It's so scary to see as well, because they look like some sort of neurological issue or seizure 😭

But apparently it's 100% normal and nothing to worry about. Those care guides just never tell you about it!!

Idk how to feel about this. She's done it before to get a rat that was too big for the door into her house. But it's literally 4pm! Girl you should be sleeping!!

Revy's back wall plants are magnetized so that she can't climb up and mess with her Radiant Heat Panel or the UVB bulb. It took her about a month to get used to that. In the beginning, I'd always wake up to every single plant being torn off.

But by now, she's got it down to a science. She never pulls at the ends of the plant and knows exactly that the base right next to the wall is the most stable part. Sometimes I catch her resting her head on top of the base, cause she knows that it won't fall off with that little weight on it. Smart baby 💞

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/13055999

Revy was in there actively exploring for like two hours. The idea was that she'd go back into her humidity box once she's had enough/wanted to hide in a familiar place, but that never happened. So I picked her up and put her on her "you can go back home" perch in front of her enclosure. She refused and started exploring in the opposite direction lol

So she got to go back to the Play Tent and after cruising around for a few more rounds, she finally settled into a paper towel tube. I would have left her to hang out for as long as she wanted, but had other obligations to attend to and didn't want to leave her unsupervised. So she had to go back cannelloni style 🥲