I just wanted to say thanks to the helpful and knowledgeable people on this forum. It’s amazing how much I’ve learned about pits just by reading this forum. In fact, some of you should consider writing a book about pits. I learned way more from this forum than from Mara’s book, and there's not a whole lot out there in book form about pits.
I’d never owned a pit before (although I kept pythons, corns, and assorted kings a number of years ago) but was considering that possibility last October. A Google search brought me to this forum and, as fate would have it, someone had posted a question about the nature of black pines, particularly as presentation animals for children… just the question I wanted to ask! I now own a 2002 CB black pine, about 3.5 ft long. As you can see from her photo, she’s gorgeous… jet black (downright shiny on her front third) and it’s very hard to see any banding, even on her tail.
I thought some of you were a bit odd, talking about how addictive pits can be. Having kept one for a couple of months now, I get it! She does have more personality than other snakes I’ve kept. She’s got a really good temperament (only hissed once… that was impressive!). I love the fact that her tail lets me know when she’s agitated, but it’s really easy to calm her down. She comes out of hiding every day, something my daughters enjoy because they almost never see our Mexican milk. Our dog is the only one who’s not sure about her. Her cage is at his eye level and they’ve had a couple of nose to nose stare-offs going back and forth along the cage front.
Anyway, I’ve got some questions for you. A couple of days ago, I put a UTH under her warm hide (UTH & infrared lamp on all the time, 2nd lamp on during the day). If she burrows into the substrate and sits on the glass, she’d be in contact with temperatures in the low 90s. That’s not too hot, is it? (If she sits on the substrate, the temp would be in the high 70s/low 80s.)
She can move to a separate cool-side hide that’s in the mid to high 60s at night. How cold can regular night temperatures be before they endanger her health or trigger the need for brumation? (I’m not interested in breeding her, so I don’t want to brumate her.)
One last question: How do you pronounce Pituophis melanoleucus? Where do the stresses go? I’ve been pronouncing it as Pit-two-OH-fis MEL-lan-oh-LEW-cus.
Thanks!
David
