I gave myself some presents yesterday to celebrate absolutely nothing at all but me – and only me. Every once in a while you should be allowed to do so, and do so in your own unique way.
In my book that means the best thing I can do is buy snakes. This particular batch of snakes was very special to me. Four cornsnakes from a very high-quality genetic lineage that I’ve wanted for a decade but never could afford (pictured), and two Chinese beauty snakes (I’ll save those for another day, but they’re amazing too).
The cornsnakes are part of my future breeding plans, and complete my group of currently ten specimens that carry the genes to produce pied-sided cornsnakes in different color combinations. The beauty snakes – if I’m completely honest – were just an impulse from the same breeder that I couldn’t resist. This species was the first ratsnake I ever kept, now probably 20+ years ago. I got emotional and just added them to the shopping basket, so to speak…
Alright, the pictures don’t do these little ones much justice, but you get the idea. These will get prettier and prettier with every month of growth from now. Aren’t they gorgeous?
Sincere question to readers, and I would appreciate your opinion on this. I know some people don’t like snakes, but does anyone care at all about these snake posts? Should I perhaps dedicate a separate page on my website to them instead of including them here in my daily blog every now and then? Any opinion is appreciated. I really just don’t know!
Robin Heinen 
Congrats on the new snakes! The shop where I used to go for rats and some of my snakes had a pair of adult beauty rat snakes. I always wanted them but due to their size and activity level, I didn’t have the space to accommodate them. I would love to see them someday!
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I used to keep Taiwanese beauty snakes, which is a different subspecies. The Chinese subspecies is considerably smaller, and much more manageable in size. Not near the 3 m coastal carpet python, or the ‘rescue’ adoptive yellow anaconda of 3.5 m that I kept in the past. These should max out well below 2 m.
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Ah, yes, I just looked them up, what he had was probably Taiwanese beauties, not Chinese! They were easily pushing 2m. I wouldn’t have minded a coastal carpet, but a yellow anaconda would probably be a bit much! I was given a “lost cause” Bredl’s carpet from him once. She was a hatchling that was getting weak and refused to eat. I managed to force-feed her and eventually get her to take frozen-thawed mice. She was my favourite snake. She was probably around 1.3m when we had to give all our snakes up due to moving to the UK. I was really looking forward to seeing her reach 2+m. The wife never cared for her due to her size and activity level compared to the ball pythons.
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Bredl’s are cool snakes too. Insanely popular in Europe for a while, then suddenly nowhere to be seen. I had about 150 snakes in the peak time, 2006/7, all kinds of stuff, but had to take the harsh decision to sell almost everything for ridiculous prices, as in 2008 with the economy collapse, getting rid of offspring was tough, and keeping everything fed without selling was even tougher. All I kept was a pair of rattlers, a pair of long-nosed vipers and six ball pythons, which I also sold two years later.
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And obviously you’re welcome to have a look some day. They’re still tiny worms now, but they’ll grow fast
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I find the snake posts fascinating. If they were spider posts, on the other hand, that would be a whole different story.
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Oh no. My last spider passed a while ago… I inspired my former PhD supervisor to start a research line investigating false widow spiders. I collected some females for him, and he now has a spider ‘menagerie’ as he calls it, with probably a couple thousand spiders. But luckily none of them are mine haha.
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Eek!
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Sorry about that… Haha
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I like the snake posts pretty much:)
I wouldn’t move them. On the other hand, if you move them to post about them in more detail, that I would like🤔
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That would be the idea. Like some individual update pages, or project pages. Maybe some field reptile section. Not sure yet. I just feel that my blog could use a little more structure!
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