Kevin,



Good point. My racers at the moment are all cb and captive-raised--maybe that's why they don't use their hiding places. They lay out in plain sight or move around right out in the open. When I've had wc animals, they were more inclined to use hiding places.



I love the periscoping behavior of these curious, intelligent animals. I've seen it in the wild a few times--once I saw a large Striped Whipsnake periscoping from a boulder pile in Oak Creek Arizona. I looked him over through close-focusing binocs and he was looking me over all the while. If you troll Dan Eby's posts on the Field Notes forum, among the tons of outstanding images he shares, he has posted pix of racers periscoping out of their hiding places in the field.



My animals periscope when I'm around--sometimes they are doing something else and freeze into position in mid-movement--they can end up looking like one of those patio mist hoses that stick up like a cobra. I imagine Jedi thoughts going through their heads...."this is not the snake you think you see....."



I should have thought of Indigos as a body weight comparison--it was better than what I came up with--good point. Keeping racers and indigos is similar in many ways, not least of which is the steady stream of droppings both groups generously share with their keepers. No, no, they shouldn't have--really, it's not necess--squirrrrt! Sigh. Right in the water bowl. Nice.



I've used paper substrate and various kinds of mulch. These days I use ordinary forest mulch, a clean brand that does not include what is euphemistically referred to in the industry as "green waste"--bits of human garbage that don't cause wildlife to flop over dead the instant they touch it. That makes it "environmentally friendly". I use clean mulch and the animals are doing well. I just have to remember to moisten it occasionally to avoid too much dust being ground out of it by the snakes' crawling on it.



Speaking of which, today is mulch moistening day. That means I get to put my hand into cages occupied by highly territorial animals that have zero fear of me. Oh well. I had too much blood in my body anyway--may as well let some of it out.

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