No! You are not alone in handling & interacting with your snakes! Not only do I handle my snakes, I regard them more as animal companions, not pets. A hard concept for most Americans, I know. For some reason, Europeans are much more likely to care for reptiles better, providing a naturalistic setups and a varied diet.

The most POWERFUL questions all of us must ask is this one: “If I were a captive, what conditions & diet would I choose for myself?

We would be MUCH kinder to ourselves than to the poor, helpless reptile in Johnny’s room that he long since lost interest in, and is slowly dying, alone in a damp cage. If we were living in a cage, but able to decide on conditions, we would not only give ourselves much mores space, and a varied, rich diet, but also ample exercise and play options.

Providing newspaper for substrate, a single water dish & hide is not living. Worse is a rack with dozens of captive animals kept in tiny shelves. It’s a temporary, high-stress environment at best – until you complete their proper vivarium setup mimicking their natural setup in the wild. If we can’t do that, we should not have the animal.

Feeding only frozen-thawed rodents covers about 10% of the normal diet that your reptile would have taken in the wild. That’s like always giving a burger to your children. In the wild they eat insects, frogs, lizards, birds, bird eggs and more. Like you, they require a varied diet to be healthy. Herpers must stop changing diet for THEIR convenience. We must feed animals what they need for proper metabolic processes to occur.

I’m glad that Humans like you exist, and that the new trend in Herpetology is away from designer morphs, instead focusing on locale-specific animals and pure bloodlines. Maybe the next step is that “Owners” will cease adding to their “collection” and begin properly caring for only the animals that they can handle regularly and feed according to their natural diet.

Ameron
Portland/Vancouver
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