Boas and kids

[Newtot]

My family found out I want a boa. I'm planning on getting a male or a dwarf species. Anyway they say that I am endangering my children by getting one. My kids are 7, 3 and 1. I really don't see it that way. Especially since it would be in my room and they would never be unsupervised. Opinions would be great. Thanks

[riddick07]

You are fine. Supervise handling responsibly. Get a cage that is secure as in has a lock and keep the keys out of reach of kids. PVC cage with a lock is as secure as it gets. I have kids that come over to help with my giants all the time and my biggest is around 14ft and very solid. She is in a cage with a lock, the kids know not to mess with her (or any of my animals really) and only touch them when I tell them it’s fine.

You only really hear of issues when people are idiots and have big animals with no locks or secure caging, starve the animal long enough that it goes for anything it can find, stupidly mess with a rodent before handling the snakes, and/or treat it like a fluffy little pet instead of a powerful animal that doesn’t really care about how much you love it.

A small dwarf locality animal poses no risk at all. A baby Tarahumara can fit in the palm of your hand. I can still hold my 3 yr old Tarahumara female in one palm even though she does hang over the edges now. The only thing is a baby dwarf locality boa can be insanely defensive and can take awhile to grow out of that stage. So it may be a striker until it’s grown up a bit. The common boas you find with all the morphs can still have some pretty big males. So you won’t be guaranteed a small animal like you will with a true dwarf locality boa.

Tarahumara female a year ago. So she’s around 2 1/2 yrs here so she’s a bit bigger now but not by much and I can still basically do this with her. She’s still on mice at 3 yrs old. She’ll probably be taking small rats as an adult or at the most a smaller medium rat. Not really kid endangering levels haha
http://i.imgur.com/2fkGx9t.jpg

[Jim Smith]

Any chance you could go with a Childrens Python instead of a boa? They stay nice and small and with a name like Childrens Python, perhaps your family members would not be as concerned.
Just a thought...

[richardhind]

ive always had boas with my kids and my grand kids love them too.
as riddick said get a lock and be supervised at all times you wont have a problem.
theres some really nice central american locality boas but as riddick said can be a bit snappy when young, my female Nicaraguan has always been great never nipped or hissed and not 5ft at nearly 4 yrs old, the leopards boas have great paint jobs and all come from the smaller sonoran boas
hope this helps