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Kinda curious...mine now is a 2 footer...very calm. I also am curious if anyone has been struck. If so feeding related. I have, my own fault my 10ft male, whom i thought was calm after "feedng mode" got me. I was putting the water dish back in...and well you know the rest. He let go right away though. My own fault. I guess I want to know other experiances, if any......

Hi, my burm is an absolute sweetheart. I got him at 3 weeks old just after his first feeding and he has been as gentle as can be from day one. I of course always give him several days of not handling him after feeding, but have never once even been struck at after about 6 months. I was "warned" that a baby of his age when I got him that I would be bitten and just expect it and count on it, but "Monty" has never once even made an attempt. I'm fairly new on here and haven't posted much, but if someone can help me out I will post a few pics of this beautiful animal. By the way, he is an albino.

Currently I have three burms(two albino's and one normal all het for granite). I have had them for about a year and a half and they all three are quite different in temperments. My male is a sweetheart. he loves to be handled and has never once shown any signs of aggression. One of my females is pretty good but occassionally hissy but not to bad and my other female is so the opposite of what a burms behavior should be. She hates to be touched and tolerates handling but you can tell that she doesn't like it. She has never bit me but has bluff stuck at me a couple of times and she has bit a friend who was snake sitting her while I was in Iraq. The friend was removing a retained eyecap and the snake felt threatened and struck and strangely enough coiled her arm. She let go after a little coercing ( had to hold her under water and she let go). In my past however all my other burms were real docile(even a couple of W C ones in the 80's. However just like people, all snakes have their own temperments and once you know each snake you will learn its limits. Todd

My current Burmese, Boots, is a total peach. She is handled rather regularly and gets bathed twice a week, enduring countless pokes, prods, bumps, and even an accidental elbow to the puss with grace; she show no bias toward handler and accepts myself, my girlfriend, buddies who stop by, and a young nephew with no problem.

That having been said, there are a few things that cause strange behaviour in her: She used to completely freak if there was a frozen, thawed rat in her cage. I'm talking hissing, striking at anything moving beyond the glass, the whole nine yards. We learned quickly that rats were not a viable food option, and she's since moved to 1.5 lb. Guinea pigs and life is good.

Boots, like most snakes, requires some degree of shelter in her enclosure. Currently, two large silk plants provide her with cover and camouflage ... prior to installing the plants, she would exhibit stress-related behaviour when caged -- rostral rubbing, climbing, trying to dig down through the litter to China, etc.

Lastly, she is mostly potty-trained -- she very rarely voids in her enclosure. However, the one time she defecated in her cage, she went ape and started tearing up the joint. She ripped out a corner of the plastic cage-liner and hid underneath it until the offending matter was removed and she was forcibly bathed by my girlfriend. The few times she has urinated in the cage never produced the same result. Curious.

I've cared for two other Burmese over the years -- one albino and another normal-phase. The normal, Godiva, was absolutely amazing. Until her tragic early death, I swore she would be a show snake -- there wasn't a mean bone in her body. She never even so much as assumed an "S" stance or even looked at me sideways. She was a reptilian diplomat, changing ophidian opinion and dispelling myths everywhere she went. She was the Burm's Burm.

Punkin, the albino, was a different story. She was a pet-shop rescue job who had suffered multiple head lacerations ("Oh, I didn't realize that the glass fishtank we had her in had a hole in it ... guess she tried to crawl out", was shy one eye, and had twenty-eight rodent bites on her body. I had found her in a pet store, less than 2' long, with a fully-grown and quite alive rat in her cage. Punkin was, sadly, scrambled. She never achieved anything close to muscle composition (she was always a sort of limp noodle) and bit me three times. Each time it was the same story -- during her regular handling, she would putter around, happy-go-lucky, and then suddenly latch onto my forearm. Her one good eye would roll up toward me and she'd suddenly get this, "Uh oh ... I've done wrong" look. Then she'd release. Her temperament could only be described as unpredictable. She never seemed malicious or even angry -- and she'd tolerate marathon handling sessions -- but every once in a while her brain would hiccup and she'd bite.

Well I seem to have prattled on a bit ...

--jr

I keep many many burmese and every single one of them is docile and easy going. They weren't always this way. Many that I bought as yearlings were highly defensive and would repeatedly strike at my face when I first obtained them. The reason for this quite frankly is that the breeder (broker?) that I bought them from never spent any time with them. They had little to no interaction with humans. They had lived in sweater boxes for a little over a year and would only get a glimpse of a human once every couple of weeks when their sweater drawers were opened and they were tossed an undersized meal to keep them small. Within one or two weeks with me these outwardly aggressive pythons calmed down and stopped attempting to bite. They were still very hissy and jumpy for a few months, but this waned and disappeared completely too over time. Now they are all very calm, tame, and easy going. All they needed was to experience that humans don't pose a threat and the rest was automatic.

Now,.. I try not to generalize. Sure there may be many similarities between different burmese, but there are more differences than similarities in my opinion. Every burmese is very much an individual and has its own set of quirks and idiosyncrasies. I treat each and every new burmese as if it is an entirely different snake species with different requirements. It's not like I can whip out a "burmese taming manual" and apply it to every burm. I can't. Because they are all just different enough that they need their own individual attentions and guidelines. This doesn't bother me at all and I actually quite like it. I have many burmese and no two are quite alike. I can't say the same about every python species. Very few in fact.

Burmese communicate very well with you. Every little subtley different hiss, snort, flinch or twitch has a different meaning. I could be here all night if I attempted to relate half of this. It would be a near impossible task. But if you as the owner just take the time to study and observe your burmese you will learn these "languages" in short time. If we ever just take the time to "listen",.. we will find that our snakes have a lot to say. They are not just some big dumb, solely instinct driven slugs. They have a capacity for compehension that has been greatly underestimated for decades.

>>Kinda curious...mine now is a 2 footer...very calm. I also am curious if anyone has been struck. If so feeding related. I have, my own fault my 10ft male, whom i thought was calm after "feedng mode" got me. I was putting the water dish back in...and well you know the rest. He let go right away though. My own fault. I guess I want to know other experiances, if any......
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