I've had my Desert Kingsnake for about 10 years. When my uncle died i was given his snake. I have no idea what sex it is, but my uncle named it Penelope so i'm going to assume its a girl. She was fully grown when i got her and i estimate her to be about 14-17 years old. I'm pretty sure she was captive bred but i could be wrong. I was about 4 or 5 when i got her and loved snakes. I held her often and we took good care of her. But after a year or 2 i stopped paying attention to her until i was about 13. It makes me feel bad now that i look back on it but in the time between when i was around 6 or 7 til i was 13 she probably got held maybe 10 or 20 times and was fed probably once a month. The last few years (i'm a few weeks from 17 now) i've realized that she needed to be cared for and i've been cleaning her cage and trying to hold her more. It's difficult to find time to hold her after school and i just got a new cornsnake in august so i'm still trying to get him adjusted as well.

As i was starting to pay her more attention i would feed her live mice(i don't do anymore) every 3 or 4 weeks to give her something more to do. Once she was constricting a medium/large mouse and i guess she did it wrong because it slipped out and bit her. It didn't bite her for more than a second and she did finish eating it, but ever since she acts funny. Whenever i put my hand in the tank to do something and i touch her or even when she sees my hand in the tank, she twithces the front 6 or so inches of her body repeatedly. It's almost like a really small jerk but it isn't meant to hit against you or anything. Also whenever you come in contact with any of her body she pushes against it. Today when i was holding her she was acting fine(still doing the jerky thing tho), and she had her head close to my hand. She had the end of her tail around my thumb and looked at it for about 2 or 3 seconds and just suddenly bit it! I yelled in surprise and jerked my hand back and immediately put her back in her tank. It drew blood but only because of the ripping her teeth did when i jerked my hand back. I've been bit by her twice before: first when i was lttle and had my hand in front of her face to feel her tongue tickle me, and second more recently when i had my hand in the tank sitting still in front of her trying to fix the thermometer in the tank. I can't figure out what to do anymore. I've been trying to hold for abotu 10-20 minutes a day been it probably been about every 2 days because of school starting and my baby snake. I have no clue what to do about this anymore! I hadn't been handling any mice or possible prey before i took her out. Can anyone please help me?

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