Advice.....Meanest B***h Ever!

[Dragons & Balls]

I just aquired a 25-30lb female blood who is Gorgeous. The only problem is she is the MEANEST snake Ever. If u go anywhere near her,U are lunch. I tried taking her out with gloves and she attacked the gloves! I am wondering how I am going to clean this B***h out. Any advise would be good.

Gino

[latazyo]

hooks

[CHRISANDBOIDS14]

Good luck with her gino! I woudl sudgest taking a solt but rigid stick/pole/something like that, and controling the frontal part of the body. Approach from behind, and grab just behind the head, then grab as far down the body as you can where you can still put your hand around her. Get someone else to hold the rest of her body and put her into a container that you can just tilt over and she can crawl back into the cage.

C.

[Linds]

Don't use gloves. They may help protect you, but they can harm the snake. A good snake hook is a vital part of anyone's toolkit when dealing with large boids, regardless of temperament. Learn to use one, and if you wish, you can also use sheilding techniques as well to prevent strikes.

[KLG]

DON'T grab her behind the head. Use a hook & control the front part of her body with that, and the rear part of her body with your other hand. It will take some practice & you may bleed a little, but in the long run building the snake's trust in you will be worth it. Grabbing a snake behind the head immediately puts it on the defensive & makes it feel threatened, so the next response from the animal will be a negative one.

K

[Invictus]

I have yet to encounter any problems using SOFT leather gloves, as opposed to using the hardness of your knuckle or the back of your hand. Come on Linds, are you telling me that the taiwan beauty who embedded a tooth in my knuckle was in less pain than the countless snakes who have nailed my gardening gloves with no ill effects? Soft material is way less harmful than a knuckle. I encourage the use of gloves with the mean ones, especailly because, as Unky Roy so brilliantly put it in another thread a long time ago, and this has stuck in my mind.. "It prevents accidental snake launchings across rooms."

But I agree 100% with Kara on hook handling the business end, and get someone to help you with the heavy end. Another thing I recommend is getting a cage you can keep on the ground and reach through the top to gain access to the snake. You'll find this much easier than trying to pull a nasty snake horizintally out the front of a cage.

[CHRISANDBOIDS14]

I know it may be bad to grab a snake behind the head. But sometimes it must be done. If she is that agressive, all she has to do is lift her head out of the hook and strike. JMO.

C.

Edit: I also agree with what Ken said about the gloves and Roy's "snake launching prevention system" lol.

[KLG]

Originally posted by CHRISANDBOIDS14
I know it may be bad to grab a snake behind the head. But sometimes it must be done. If she is that agressive, all she has to do is lift her head out of the hook and strike. JMO.


Right...I'm aware of that. It's worth it, however, to some people to at least TRY to establish some rapport with a snake than make it lose all trust in someone by throttling it every time the animal must be handled. I guess I fail to see why folks must bite off more than they can chew sometimes.

You'd be amazed how many pissed-off bloods can be handled fairly easily with a hook & a hand once someone is willing to invest some time & a little patience into learning a smooth process.

Just my $.02

K

[Scales Zoo]

And holding on to a blood python by the head can be dangerous for the snake. Such a heavy bodied snake, if it starts to thrash, can kill itself If you are still holding onto the head / neck area.

Ryan

[CHRISANDBOIDS14]

I see your points, and agree. Thank-you for elaborating. It is definetly possible(with patience) to work with hook. As I said, if you are holding the head and upper body, get someone else to hold the rest. Its not gonna wrap around two people(unless they are little kids or something). I would(if I had a hook but dont and prefer to use my bare hands), use a hook, or at least give it a shot. I would probably try getting it into a pillowcase, then handling or stroking the snake through the pillowcase. I know that would possibly be risky as you cant see the head of the animal, and it might stress cause it cant see what is happening, but I'm not too sure as to how it would react. Any ideas? It's just a sugestion, and I have never tried it.

C.

[Dragons & Balls]

Thanks for the advice and keep it coming....

Gino

[Linds]

Well I'd like to see anyone throw a blood across the room by jerking away :p Regardless, I cannot agree that having a snake stuck in my cloth gardening gloves is better than taking a bite. True sometimes they will lose their teeth, but they lose them throughout their life anyways, the chance of prematurely knocking one out or doing damage to their jaws are greatly reduced when not using gloves. IMHO if you are so afraid of getting bitten by the animal you need to wear gloves, you aren't ready to be working with them yet. There are many other safer alternatives to handling aggressive snakes.

[Invictus]

Again, you're telling me that soft gloves have more of a chance of damaging their jaw than a hard knuckle or a bone. LOL.. ok. I'll just drop this one now, pending one more statement....

I'm 90% sure that the tooth that got embedded in my knuckle WAS prematurely knocked out, and the boa that bit me right on the back the hand at the pet store spent the rest of the night realigning his jaw. My gloves have taken bites from everything ranging from king snakes to adult boas and papuan pythons, and not one of them has gotten a tooth stuck. So I'm afraid the statistics do NOT favor your opinion on this one Linds.

[marisa]

I think she is saying soft gloves cause teeth to get caught BECAUSE they are soft. Which is true in my experience as well, although I do not keep bloods.....both our GTP and the ATB I have had have bitten gloves and gotten partially stuck on the glove. We just don't bother with them anymore. That's my tiny experience with gloves anyways.

Maybe that's what she meant?

Marisa

[Linds]

Cotton gardening gloves are the most commonly used gloves when it comes to snake handling and yes, they DO snag teeth. The way the threads are woven together, albeit soft, poses a threat of snagging teeth, and when you jerk away with a snake stuck in your glove, it can do damage. How would you feel being hurled around by your tooth? Leather gloves are different as they are the same general material as skin, which is why yours haven't yanked out any teeth. If you read my post, you would see that I never say teeth will never be knocked out prematurely, just that there are many things that can be done to reduce this. However, 90% of the time people use cloth gloves, and it's an age old story of snakes getting stuck in them.

[jjnnbns]

I have also heard that the teeth can stick or "snag" on gloves, but I assume that this would be more common on a cotton glove rather than a leather glove, which would resemble skin more.

[Jamie]

From what I have experienced getting bitten is going to happen, it is just a matter of time. IMO the longer you go without getting bit just means your number is coming up. With the whole gloves issue, I chose not to wear gloves with any of my snakes...I have been bit and realize that I will be tagged again if I continue to own these snakes and I can handle this. I keep bloods because I love this particular snake but also this is the snake that has tagged me the most. All you can do is just learn by handling her a little at a time to get used to her

[JonD]

Gino, have you tried putting a box in the enclosure? Alot of times, the snakes will go hide in them and it's just as simple as closing it and taking it out. Never tried this with a blood, but it works great for others...;)

[jfmoore]

To echo and elaborate on what others have suggested - make friends with these:

Gloves
Hooks
Hide Containers

How many people here have tame 30 pound blood pythons, much less wild ones that size? Has anybody here actually ever manipulated any 30 pound snake on two hooks by themselves– that is, lifting it up and moving it around? I sure can’t. I’m way too weak. Hell, those big boa hooks with the nice wide jaws weigh a ton all by themselves. With regular hooks you’d run the risk of injuring a wide bodied snake like a big blood python if you tried to lift and carry it using only one thin, standard hook.

I’ve always been a big fan of leather gloves when handling specimens which have shown a propensity for striking – and not just because I’m a sissy about being bitten by a big python (which I most definitely am :) ). You usually get far less of a startled/defensive response when you lay a gloved hand on a fearful snake as opposed to a HOT bare hand – especially from an animal with heat pits. Use gloves! Wear long sleeves! Whatever it takes to give YOU confidence will contribute to a calm, deliberate handling technique. If that snake is as big and as wild as you say, then it is a major handful for one person.

The most effective technique I use for managing difficult snakes has to do with their husbandry. Almost all of my larger snakes are provided with a hide box that is a Rubbermaid-type container with a hole cut in the lid - a variation on the trap or shift box used by many venomous keepers. But I started doing it just because it seemed like an easy way to provide extra security for the snake while still allowing me to view it. We all know to use hides for smaller snakes in open caging. Why should that concept not apply when species that get big grow up? I use plain paper, slightly dampened CareFresh or sphagnum moss in the hide, and many of my blood pythons spend most of their time inside during daylight hours. So all you have to do is cover the hole and lift the box out in order to service the cage. Conversely, when the snake produces waste in the box, it usually crawls out of it afterwards, so you can just lift out the (mostly) empty box to clean it.

Regarding picking up a large blood python which is not tame - I usually use a hook in one hand to keep the head away from me while I get my other hand under the rear half of the snake. Then I put the hook down and gently scoop up the front half and try to keep that business end with the teeth pointed away from me. And don't forget to direct your hot breath away from the snake, too! Sometimes, the worst is over at that point. Of course, if the snake is calmly coiled up inside its hide box, it is a whole lot easier to approach from above than if you have to drag it out of its cage. Please do not try to pin an animal that size, or try to restrain it by gripping its neck. You risk causing injury or even death from trauma to its spine.

I’m sure you know she’s not really “mean,” as you put it, but frightened and threatened by you. Still, if I dread interacting with a snake, there’s a good chance it will receive less than optimal care. And you definitely want to keep a blood python’s substrate clean. So I recommend you consider using that box within the cage method. I promise that your day-to-day maintenance will become a lot less exciting if you give it a try. :D

The photo below shows ‘Nasty,’ a usually cranky Burmese python I got as an adult in 1979. Since that underbed storage box became his hide container, both of us have become less stressed when we have to deal with each other.

Good luck,
Joan

http://www.ssnakess.com/photopost/data/507/3573Burminabox.jpg

[BOAS_N_PYTHONS]

GINO:

So far everyone here has given you alot of great advice and all or parts of it combined will help you out. A hide is very important for the security and comfort of the blood python. Also safety for you if you need to get in the cage to clean or maintain the cage with water bowls and so on. The other tools like hooks and so on are also good to handle a attitude boid and a blood python is not a joke it can be very serious.

But I recommend some other options before handling and finding out what this blood' s attitude is like. Things that work for me is trying the scent imprint. This means wear like 5 shirts all day and when sleeping for a few days each, making sure they get alot of your scent then add them to your blood cage and leave the blood alone with them, even cover the front of the cage with newspaper or a towel so it does not see you around. Try this out for a month, you can feed it but very little stress on it. This works for me most of the time its worth a try for you.

Cya...

Tony

[Mike177]

If you know how to restrain a snake behind its head and do it right you shoulnt run into a problem as far as the snake injuring himself but there is alot of room for error. I know that if i handled my blood like that all the time he woulnt eat. hooks are great tools to have no matter what snakes you keep or what there temperments are, its just something thats good to have. If your not good with them i would also suggest getting the midwest gental giant tongs. they are much wider and will support more of the snakes body and you have the option go hold the snake with a bit of pressure. I have personally found that when i first started handling aggressive snakes (mostly in the field) i was much more inclinded to use the tongs but as time goes on i seem to prefer the hook. but the tongs do come in handy especally around feeding time when i have to get a 4 pound rabbit and dangle it in the air in the back of a 4 foot deep cage that only has a 16' opining. its worth the money to get them and the longer you have them the more uses you will find for them. i know that midwest honnors there word on their garrente. i had a spring in my tongs bust and they fixed it very proptly and shipped it back within no time.