A long time ago, I believe 1970 or early 71. I worked at Ross Allens Reptile institute. I was the head keeper, hmmmmmm for most of the time, I was the only keeper, hahahahahaha.

I forget who wrote this paper, but it was about longevity in captive snakes. He published that the average captive(zoo) snake lived for under two years. Remember that was the average. He then went on to say that is took about two years for a captive snake to die under poor conditions. That is, the average captive kept in a box and watered would live near two years.

That paper of very interesting to me. As I was already breeding some snakes.

At the institute they did not heat or offer hot spots for anything. So one day, the curator(Andy Koukacoulis(sp)) and I had a discussion on the advantages of providing heat. Well, it came down to this, we made a bet. I bet him that I could raise some retics way faster then he could. He believe all you need was space. (remember room temps in Fla. are not that bad) The conflict was, Heat vs. Space.

So I ordered up five babie retics, they were newly hatched about 23 inches. As in really small.

The curator took three and put them in this large cage, something like 8 feet long, 5 feet high and three deep. I got a really small cage(thats all I was allowed) three feet, by two feet, by a foot high and it had a center divider. hehehehehehehe, So I installed a lite fixture in each side.

The one thing they did well at Ross Allens was buy food for their animals and the keepers. So we have plenty of food.

As you can imagine, I fed my two retics everyday, sometimes more. And as you can imagine, he fed his once or twice a week. After a couple months, the curator asked how my retics were doing. I said fine. He asked to see them. Mine were hidden in a back room, his were in a large entry room. I brought one of mine out, the curator gasped and almost fell down. My retics were nearly 7 feet, in two months and 95F constant, with all the food they could eat. His had grown about three inches(not bad I guess)

The sad part was, he did not live up to his end of the bet(i have no idea what it was) he simply said, "make them all that way" hahahahahahahahahaha So what I won was more work. hahahahahaha. Cheers

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