This mornings fun was on my mind all day, so I will share it with everyone. Something for the "newbees" too consider when they're thinking how wonderful keeping large Bitis must be....
This morning I entered my Serpentarium around 6:30 am, my normal time to do morning tasks like: mist, collect poo, and to just let them know I'm there not just there as a provider of meals. I enter to find that my Puff Adder piled "condensed rat" about 4 inches high up the cage door window and is resting nearby huffing & puffing. If I didn't know better, I would think she did it there on purpose because she was expecting a feed yesterday and did not get one. During the past two years she placed the processed rodents in the back center of her cage where it could be dealt without too much fuss with my special long handled spoon. Today’s mess could not be removed because of its location as it was in the front right corner where the long spoon was useless.
Well this is a fine mess to deal with before breakfast on a Monday morning. I have two options available to safely deal with material formally known as rodents but first, the known personality traits and the two things that set her off, One: To be removed from her home. Two: Have anyone share her space (home) when something needs to be done inside. The first option is to move her to a storage box, which is easier said than done. The second option is to get her to the back of the cage (28Lx24Dx12H) and insert a Plexiglas divider to keep my hands necrosis free. Since she often launches herself out of her cage during removal, falling about 5 feet to the floor with a big THUD I chose the latter today. I worry about her large mass (about a Kilo)hitting the floor and rupturing internal organs ending her life. It unfortunately happened before with a young Gabby about 15 “long when just a day after a meal she struck and fell off the hook hitting the floor hard. By the next morning she was belly up in the cage destine for the freezer.
My plexiglass divider is clear; something I thought would be a good idea but later found out that it was not. Why you ask? I'll tell you. Clear plexiglass lets you keep an eye on your specimen and what it’s up to behind the divider; however, it also allows them to see you sometimes provoking a strike. It keeps you safe but the aftermath not convenient; having to change your shorts when you soil them after a strike hits the divider. Well my fix is to tape a cotton towel over the Plexiglass making it opaque and preventing them from seeing you while you toil away to make the cage right again. Its works well but is still un-nerving to have a very vocal Bitis on the other side somewhere, watching and waiting for the slightest error to occur.
Fortunately, she settled down except when I made a large thump while cleaning the goo out of the corner of the cage. I cautiously peered around the divider at one point to see where she was and what she was doing. I could only see one eye peering back like in the scene in Jurassic park when the T-Rex was looking inside the jeep with the kids. She was nose to plexiglass as if waiting for it to make the first move like an old west gunfighter waiting to draw. No strikes occurred, so my work pants survived the ordeal as did I. Monday’s are bad enough without a pissed Puff Adder causing you to ponder if you really want to keep Venomous Snakes.
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Save a Rattlesnake...Skin a Sweetwater Resident!
