#shoelacetm

Ivo: Is not going to hesitate to take the food. Use 24″ hemostats in case she misses. (She has missed before and bitten the tongs, realized that’s not the rat, and gone back of her own accord to find the rat. Be safe!)

Newdle (Working Title): Is cautiously investigative of the food. Hisses a lot at all things. Once he realizes that food is present, he will gently take the food from the tongs.

Matilda: I used to have to set her food in her enclosure and wait for her to find it, but now she’ll feed from tongs! She’s a very dependable eater.

Shoelace™: Has already become aware that there is food in the area, and is standing at the top of the enclosure waiting for you to open the door and give her the food. INCREDIBLY FOOD MOTIVATED. Not too strikey though, thankfully. Holds her food and waits until you’re done feeding the other snakes before actually eating it, so I often feed her last. When she’s done eating, she cruises around looking for more food no matter HOW big her meal was… please calm down???

Neku: Generally a reliable feeder. Usually drags the food back into his favorite tube to eat in solitude. (Solitube…)

Joshua: Is scared of all food over a certain size………. can be a problem feeder. Often mock-strikes to try and make the food go away. Once he actually bites it and realizes that it is, in fact, food, you’re usually good to go…

Lucy: Is there, waiting for the food from out of a hide, blep blep i’m heckin hunger. Has an insane strike when she takes her food, often prompts calls of “that’s my girl!” 

Worm: Does not feed from tongs. I have to lay her food under a hide and wait for her to find them. I put the food in the same place every time, so she usually does! She’s going to go off food soon, she doesn’t eat during the winter.

Orange Juice: …I often have to unbury her head and tap her with the food for her to know it’s there… she usually finds it on her own when I leave it in there, but other times she just misses a week of food, and I hate that, so I just… present her with the food. She’s doing her best…

Facts About the Shoelace™ ^{(pantherophis guttatus)}

• The Shoelace™ is a Corn Snake with a very complex series of genes. Specifically, she is a 100% Het Amelanistic Anerythristic Hypo Strawberry Ultramel Corn Snake, and an F1 outcross of the Tequila Sunrise morph lineage. In order, this means quite a few things. The first is that she carries the Amelanistic gene, but is heterozygous for it, meaning that she doesn’t visually show it on her body. The next is that she visually expresses the Anerythristic gene. Antherythristic removes red/orange colors from the snake who carries it, leaving behind grey, brown, and black (usually.) The next genes is Hypomelanism, which in corn snakes reduces overall melanin (the stuff that gives skin, hair, scales, and other things their coloration) expression, which, in turn, thins out the border around patterns on the snake, and can lighten up the typical checkerboard stomach pattern shown in most corn snakes. The gene following that is Strawberry, which further reduces melanin content, but doesn’t act on red – hence the name. Ultramel is the last gene in this list, and it is a gene with a lot of history and discussion in the hobby as to where it originated from. Ultramel also reduces melanin, and lightens dark colors in the animal who expresses it. What all of this means for the Shoelace™ is that she becomes a pale pinkish snake with some yellow on her front half, a pale belly and soft patterns down her sides. She’s a very pretty girl!

• Adding onto that, F1 refers to the number of generations away from a specific bloodline, and Tequila Sunrise is a name given to a specific gene combination that produces the corn snake morph of light-color pale pink-white snakes.

• The Shoelace™ is about two years old, and around 3ft (1m) long – but growing rapidly, and putting on more weight by the week. She’s going to be a big girl! For a corn snake.

• The Shoelace™ is very fast and active, and troublesome to hold onto – but handling her is good for her future in case I need to examine her and when it’s cleaning day, so she is held in spite of her attempts to escape. Eventually she settles down… but sometimes she musks me first.

• You don’t want to know what musk is.

• One way to make it up to her is by letting her climb around on things once she’s out. The Shoelace™ loves to climb, and she’s happiest when exploring something new and interesting that she can weave her body around.

• Due to her flighty nature, the Shoelace™, like Worm, has never seen grass, and with the way things are shaping up, she probably never will.

Ask me a question about Ivo here, and I can add it to this list!

just fed the shoelace™

she’s looking for more food

at times like this, i am reminded of the fact that snakes are like those benthic-dwelling sea sponges that only exist to absorb food into their tubelike expandable membranes that are 90% stomach 9% reproductive organs and 1% a cognizant will to exist

thanks to the Shoelace™ for always going to the bathroom in the same exact corner of her enclosure it makes for easy spot cleaning and i appreciate the simple things in life

At least in my humble opinion.

Paper Towels/Butcher Roll/Newspaper

Verdict: Great for quarantine and snakes like Joshua who waste huge amounts of substrate if given the chance with their… bathroom habits. A good choice for larger snakes or just about anyone, really, but take note for humidity lovers and burrowers. That said, while Lucy was in quarantine, I maintained her on paper towels without any mold issues. Constant Vigilance, my dears!

Shredded Aspen

Cons:
-Still dusty
-Should prophylactically freeze it before use
-Will mold when damp
-Did I mention the dust
-Takes a lot of space to store while it’s not being used
-Gets expensive quickly if you have a snake named Joshua and must replace all of it regularly
-I am literally coughing sawdust over here from deep-cleaning Matilda’s house
-I’m not sure how renewable it is

Verdict: Fantastic for burrowing snakes, use the hell out of it for most everyone personally. As long as they don’t need daily dampenings like Lucy and the Newdle, it’s a great option in my opinion, especially since you can even find it at the walmart.

Shredded Pine: Shittier aspen. Just buy the aspen.

Cedar: If you want a dead pet, go for it.

Carefresh (and other products)

Cons
-It’s going to mold if it gets wet
-Still takes a lot of space
-Costs a little more than aspen in my experience
-The colorful one costs even more
-Doesn’t hold tunnels or clump quite as well
-It’s still expensive to replace en masse
-Will make you want to color-code your snakes’ enclosures, requiring more substrate than usual

Verdict: I use this for corn snakes in particular because it’s fun and more forgiving to work with than Aspen when it comes to their antics and bathroom frequency. It’s probably good for most (CAVEAT EMPTOR) colubrids in that regard, garters and really BIG colubrids notwithstanding. IMO Carefresh and Aspen are fairly interchangeable between each other in their function. Protip: put one half Carefresh, one half Aspen in a Sand Boa enclosure. The texture change is pleasing.

Sand

Verdict: Fuck sand.
(It irritates your snake’s eyes, cloaca, and mouth. Ingesting it can be dangerous. Vita-sand is some bullshit. Crushed walnuts aren’t even real sand and are also shit. As an enrichment item in limited exposure it’s not the worst thing on earth, but IN MY OPINION fuck sand.

Hemp: I WISH I COULD BUY IT HERE

Cypress Mulch/Forest Floor/et al

Cons:
-From what I understand, Cypress isn’t harvested in a sustainable fashion? Someone fill me in.
-Sometimes has… things. Freeze it before use.
-Harder to buy in the same kind of bulk that one would buy aspen/carefresh in
-Trust me, dry it out some before use
-It’s really heavy compared to other things mentioned

Verdict: Great for moisture-lovers, maybe not great for the environment, and it’s heavy and damp so use can be a pain. Pretty mold-resistant though.

Coconut Fiber/Coir/Eco-Earth et al

Orchid Bark

Gravel: I hate you.

Those are all the ones I have experience with, this isn’t a particularly good list, but it’s 4am and I just cleaned Matilda’s house, so I felt inspired to yell about snake bedding. I’m sure I forgot some things, so let me know about it if I did, or tell me your experiences with things I might not have liked. Unless they are sand.

Fuck sand.

As always I speak purely from a snake perspective, and those in the amphibian, invert, and lizard-world naturally have different views on all of this! And I can only speak for my own experiences, too; I don’t claim to speak for the majority whatsoever!

Thank you for reading if you read this~

blessed be the shoelace™ for always going to the bathroom in the same corner of her enclosure, thank you for this gift of convenient spot cleaning oh kind and merciful shoelace™, yours is the only order in a truly unjust and chaotic world