DEMING HEADLIGHT (New Mexico) 13 August 07 Man lives with wife, two kids — and 31 boa constrictors (Rick Nathanson, Albuquerque Journal)
Albuquerque (AP): Kitties are cute, puppies are playful, and snakes are ... well, kind of "icky" as pets go.
When special education schoolteacher Joe Acosta decided to bring home a Red Tail boa constrictor seven years ago, the reaction from his wife, Maria Acosta, was typical.
"My first response was 'Gross! Icky! I don't want to be part of it,"' she says. "I honestly thought it was a phase. He gets crazy ideas all the time, so I thought this was one of Joseph's crazy ideas."
Now, the Acostas' Albuquerque home is a breeding ground for Red Tail boas. With the birth of a new clutch, the Acostas have 31 snakes, 22 of them babies that will soon be sold to individuals and pet stores. At least three of the adults are 6 feet long and as big around as a cantaloupe.
In the intervening years, Maria Acosta has lost most of her fear of snakes, and the Acostas' two children, ages 8 and 4, grew up handling the creatures and are largely fearless.
The snakes are kept in clean and secure tanks, and the children are allowed to handle them only under supervision.
After returning from college in Miami in 2000, "a friend invited me to go snake hunting with him," Acosta says.
"We'd find bullsnakes, Western diamondback rattlesnakes, prairie rattlesnakes and some others. We'd catch them, look at them, take pictures and let them go on their way. Kind of like catch and release with fish," he says.
Acosta, 30, who has an elbow-to-shoulder snake tattoo on his left arm, soon began visiting local pet shops to survey their inventories of snakes. He became enamored with a baby snake identified as a Colombian Red Tail boa constrictor.
The snakes generally have handsome markings and reddish colors, especially around the tail, but colors can also include copper, brown, gray, chestnut, orange and pink.
"When I bought the baby, I also got to see the mother and she was huge. I was just enthralled thinking that this 12-inch baby could potentially get to be 10 feet long or more."
The female snake is now 7 years old and about 6 feet long.
Acosta acquired another female baby Red Tail boa a year and a half later.
Acosta later bought a third Red Tail boa that was about 18 inches long — a male that turned out to be something of a ladies man. He sired two clutches of 18 and 24 babies with the first female and two clutches of 20 and 22 with the second female.
Red Tail boas, like all constrictors, have live births. The baby snakes are born fully capable of taking care of themselves.
Acosta waits until the babies eat their first live food and eliminate it and go through their first shedding before he sells them. He gets about $60 each from individual buyers and $30 to $40 each from pet shop that buy in quantity.
"They're less maintenance than a dog or a cat. I feed them once every two weeks, replace their water dish every three to five days, and clean out their tanks about twice a month," he says.
During those regular tank cleanings, Acosta takes his larger snakes outside one at a time, places them on the grass and sprays them with a garden hose.
Feeding the snakes might be a turnoff to even the most open-minded snake admirers. "I prefer to feed them live mice or rats rather than the frozen ones, which don't have the same smell that snakes find appetizing," Acosta says.
If the live mouse or rat has fairly developed teeth or claws that could potentially injure a snake, Acosta bops the rodent on the head with a wooden dowel to stun it before placing it in the tank still twitching.
"The prey has enough motion in it to attract the snake, which smells it and immediately figures out it's food. They have this built-in prehistoric knowledge of what to do," he says.
Dale Belcher, curator of herpetology at the Rio Grande Zoo, says the designation of Red Tail boa isn't technically correct. While there is a true Red Tail boa subspecies found in some parts of South America, nearly all the boas called Red Tails that are imported into the United States are actually another subspecies that ranges from South America north into Mexico.
Regardless of their origins, they can be good-looking animals, he says.
"Snakes biologically are pretty fascinating. They are solitary predators and socializing is not a normal, natural thing for them. They are more of a display pet," Belcher says.
Red Tail boas aren't dangerous to breed in a home, but they do have small needle-like teeth, "and getting bit is no fun," Belcher says.
The larger of these snakes could theoretically wrap around a small child and constrict hard enough to injure or kill. Belcher, however, says he has never seen a report about such an event occurring. The best advice, he says, is "be careful and use common sense."
Man lives with wife, two kids — and 31 boa constrictors