Sancho and Updates

Sancho is a 6' Colombian Red Tail Boa that we took in a little over a month and a half ago.  A friend of ours had him and decided he couldn't care for him anymore and asked us if we would find him a new home.  Sean used to have a red tail, and has always wanted another, so we figured home was found, ours :-)  Honestly, we have no clue if Sancho is a boy or a girl because he has never been sexed, but we go with boy when speaking because of the name.  He is about 4 1/2 years old (very rough estimate) and is fully grown.

Sancho getting used to his new domain.

Whenever you take in any animal from someone else there are always adjustments that need to be made.  Moving an animal is stressful, plus the change in environment, handling, feeding, etc.  It takes any animal a bit of time to come into their own and show you their personality.  We are still adjusting with Sancho, but we think the fit will be good in the long run and plan to keep him.

One of the adjustments that we thought we may have problems with was feeding.  Sancho has been fed larger live meals, once a month, and in his enclosure.  That's not quite how we roll around here, so we were worried about the obvious things.  Is he going to eat frozen?  Will he eat out of his enclosure?  How will he react to smaller meals more often?

We planned to feed one large/extra large rat every other week, which is an acceptable feeding schedule for an adult red tail.  We waited a few weeks before we fed the first time, not only to give him a chance to get used to us, but to make sure he was hungry when we fed.  The first feeding went fine.  We fed one frozen/thawed extra large rat and he didn't hesitate at all.  Sean said he did have a bit of trouble getting it down, so we decided to switch to the next size down for the next feeding.

We fed again last week, and again, had no problems.  He was definitely more aggressive this time, he struck the rat and coiled, a good sign that he thought it was live and will have no problems feeding on frozen/thawed in the future.  Once he released the coil he did do something that made us laugh (try being quiet when a snake is feeding and doing something funny, its rather hard).

We have some friends that have red tails, and when they feed they put heating pads under the feeding containers to encourage the snakes to eat.  Sancho got a bit confused by the extra heat.  In his mind, heat = food, and with more than one heat source (rat and bottom of Rubbermaid container), he couldn't decide what to eat.  He kept nosing the bottom of the container and acting like he was trying to eat it.  Over and over he would slide his nose around on the floor and try to open his mouth over a food item that wasn't there.  Finally we carefully slid him off of the heating pad so we didn't disturb him, and he found the rat and fed right away.

Overall, things are going pretty well, and we couldn't be happier.

Also, Isley ate again with no problems, yay!  Hopefully this is her getting back on schedule after her adjustments to us.

Beauty shot, I love her colors.

In other news, my mom sent me a picture of Spike, the only one she had.  This picture pretty much says it all about Spike, big cuddly lovey cat.

Things are going pretty well with cleanup at my parent's house.  We got a lot done this weekend, and now my childhood bedroom is emptied.  That's good for me, less memories for me to walk through.  But my parents still have a long haul in front of them.

Also in other news, my aunt passed last week.  I'm glad she's not in pain anymore, and 84 years is quite a long life.  She was with it right to the end, in true fashion for her.  Below is a picture of her how I will always remember her, spunky, fun loving, and happy.  She will be greatly missed by all those she touched in life.

Christmas a few years ago, and as always, she was cracking jokes.