Red Ned

Snakes are misunderstood creatures. They are often described as scary, sneaky, slimy, venomous, evil, House Slytherin, salmonella carriers, and can even swim through your toilet!

But they actually have cool traits like being gentle, patient, loving, quiet, low maintenance, long living pets, and clever escape artists.

What’s the connection between me and snakes? My boyfriend Justin decided he wanted to raise a snake during this pandemic. I was very meh and hesitant about it. But he did his research, and he searched the world wide web sifting through snake sites for THE one and found this guy.

With no experience about snakes, this one just looked a little bit too red, kinda juicy, and quite long to me so I was even more meh and hesitant about it. But when the delivery man came to drop it off, he arrive in this potato salad container which was a surprise to me because it was everything opposite of what I initially thought.

Fun fact: The container says DOH instead of DOB because snakes are hatched instead of birthed.

So on April 26, 2020, Ned Jean Mi the corn snake entered into my life.

The Habitat

So let's talk about Ned's home. There are two sides to his tank: a cool side - at 75F - and a warm side - at 85F. Because snakes are coldblooded, they need a temperature gradient to regulate their body heat. They need a certain temperature to eat, too, because it helps with digestion.

Some trimmings in his tank include branches for slithering up and over, greenery for coverage, bedding that one would use for the common hamster, hides - the black boxes for Ned to be unseen, packing tubes to squirm through, and the tank is wrapped in reflective insulation because that particular glass tank doesn't retain heat too well.

The Feeding

What does Ned the snake eat? He eats mice - pinky mice specifically. You want to feed a snake 1.5x its thickness. And so there are levels of mouse sizes according to how big the snake is. We have...

Small Pinky

Large Pinky

Fuzzy

Hopper

Small Adult

Adult

Jumbo

A pack of 50 pinky mice.

Ned is fed once a week and the way we prepare the pinky mice is first - defrost in a Ziploc bag, second - dunk it in a jacuzzi bath to warm it up so it simulates a live tender mouse, and third - pick up the mouse by forceps and dangle it in front of Ned's face.

We don't want to feed Ned a living mice because we put it at risk, forcing him to protect himself. If the snake isn’t hungry, the mouse can potentially attack and stress out the snake. On the flipside, it's also cruel to the mouse because you're basically putting it inside a lion's den - so to speak - to be gobbled up.

The Shedding

And when you eat, you grow. Specifically for snakes, they grow by shedding. Shedding happens once every few months. During the process of the shed, they don't come out of their hiding spot and they don't roam. This is a vulnerable time because they're stressed out as they become blind because the skin on their eyes fog up. They don’t eat while they’re shedding. The process of shedding usually goes by the snake looking dull for a week > the color will come back > they'll become dull again > and then shed. They can grow roughly around 4 feet.

Ned's shed.

The Fun

Ned does a lot of solo play like trying to escape from the tank, squeezing through weird places, and lots of hiding.

As you saw earlier, outside of his tank is a nest camera for us to monitor him if anything exciting happens, and he seems to have the most activity at night being nocturnal creatures. Also I'm not sure why I'm putting this in 'The Fun' section, but snake poop looks like caviar, and the pee starts off as milky white and dries up to look something like bird poop.

The Affection

So in the beginning, I did have my hesitations about corn snakes, but I kind of grew affectionate to Ned after seeing his habits and personality. I now let him slither around in my hands.

and we occasionally watch Netflix together.

This is a love story between me and a corn snake.