First off, I’m so sorry that you’ve lost your snake. Normally I wouldn’t do this. Normally I wouldn’t invade somebody’s grief with an agenda, but what’s gone on here is very much a cautionary tale and I’d be frankly remiss if this gets traction with so much misinformation about snakes. I don’t want somebody to see this post and do what you did. This post poses a danger to other first-time snake owners. Everything you did, everything you did for your snake was dangerous. The sad fact is that this wouldn’t have happened if you had followed the care sheets and paid attention to the natural history and lifestyle of the species you chose to own. Instead, you treated him like an animal he is not- a human. I don’t doubt for one instant the love you had for your snake, but there’s a reason he died young and that reason was totally avoidable errors in husbandry. You literally loved your snake to death. Everything in your story is dangerous to snakes. Everything. I was hoping that much of it was exaggerated because had you really seen three vets who knew anything about reptiles, they would have told you that what you were doing was dangerous.
Let’s start with your basic husbandry. Ball pythons are from tropical Africa. They need high humidity and warm ambient temperatures. I really don’t think your room could support that. The warm end of his thermogradient needed to be a constant 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Can you honestly tell me you maintained 60% humidity and 95 degree temperatures in your bedroom? There’s a reason we keep ball pythons in terraria. It’s so we can provide safe and healthy microclimates for them. It’s so that we can control their world so that they are healthy. By forcing your snake to sleep with you and interact with you so constantly, you were taking away his ability to choose what part of a regulated microclimate he was existing in; you were forcing him to exist in this strange, uncomfortably dry world. I don’t know if you ever kept him in his terrarium- you didn’t say- but I do know that forcing him to sleep with you (instead of letting him roam around a nice big terrarium as a nocturnal animal would like to do) was extremely unhealthy. I’m going to guess that even though you say it was summer where you were he was chilly most of the time. And uncomfortable. Most of the time ball pythons like to climb, but you say he was constantly on you, cuddling. The cuddling? That’s not cuddling. When humans touch, it triggers a wave of oxytocin, the “bonding hormone.” It makes us feel good and happy.
Snakes don’t produce oxytocin.
What was happening was that you were warm. Your body temperature is 98.6 degrees, which is very cosy for a ball python. He wasn’t hugging you, he was leaching your body heat.
You taking him out in public was dangerous as well. What if some café owner had seen him and panicked and called Animal Control? Even if he’s an emotional support animal (which you did not mention him being), you don’t actually have the legally protected right to take him anywhere except on an airplane. He could have gotten sick from all the public contact. You say he wasn’t stressed, but how do you know? What do you think the stress behaviors of a ball python are?
It was also dangerous to ever allow him around a cat. Cats have gram-negative bacteria in their saliva. This gets under their claws and multiplies as they groom. Gram-negative bacteria have a protective layer that makes it harder for the immune system to fight off. As for his mice biting him… Why weren’t you feeding him frozen prey? Did you try? Let me guess, he refused to eat the frozen mice. He wasn’t not eating because he was docile, he wasn’t eating because he was constantly stressed. Snakes don’t eat when they’re scared or uncomfortable with their environment.
The shiny scales? Your snake had stuck shed. It’s not healthy for a snake to have a stuck shed. Stuck sheds are a sign of improper humidity or temperatures.
The baths were also a mistake. Snakes can’t thermoregulate like we do, so whatever temperature the water is at is what they’re stuck with. And we humans tend to run water much hotter than a snake is comfortable with. In general, you shouldn’t run the water for a snake’s bath (which should only happen rarely and when necessary- like if they have a stuck shed or crawled through their poop) any warmer than lukewarm- it should only feel mildly warm on the inside of your wrist. Tub cleaning chemicals and the chemicals in soap are also toxic to snakes, and if he consumed any of the water, even by accident, he could have fallen ill- which could have contributed to his demise.
And now I need to tell you about anthropomorphism, which is the primary reason I’m reblogging this post. Bad husbandry is correctible, but what’s really dangerous here is this mindset that your snake is as emotionally sophisticated as you think he is. Snakes don’t feel love. They can’t. They’re physically incapable of feeling love. They have emotions- aggression, curiosity, comfort- but they don’t love. You have attributed distinctly human emotions to an animal that literally does not have the brain structure or hormonal presence to feel these things. Even a mammal wouldn’t display many of the behaviors you attribute to this snake’s conscious decisions. Snakes can’t read your mind. They can maybe pick up on some body language- if you’re big and threatening, the snake will be scared, for instance, but he wasn’t picking up on your mood swings. He was just a snake doing snakey things. But by reading into his behavior with these human emotions, you created this image of a snake in your mind that’s more akin to the behavior of a snake in a fantasy novel. Snakes have emotions, but not the ones attributed in this post.
That snake didn’t think you were his mum. Ball pythons have no interactions with their parents post-hatching and there’s no evidence that they even recognize their parents. Snakes scatter pretty quickly because adult snakes of many species will eat baby snakes. I don’t actually believe that three vets told you in earnest that you were his mum- and if they did, I’d like their names so that the reptile community can know that these vets support dangerous anthropomorphism and make their veterinary choices accordingly. Responsible vets would never tell you that it’s ok to free-roam a ball python in a bedroom.
The kisses? Weren’t kisses. They were just your snake booping you with his face. My snake does that too and it’s not because he loves me, it’s because my mouth smells interesting and he’s curious. Snakes are gloriously curious and that’s part of the charm of owning one- to see how their natural behaviors allow them to thrive in our care. That’s if we provide what they need for their existence. There are millions of happy, healthy pet ball pythons in this world and none of them are sleeping with their owners. Instead, they’re living in terraria. They’re not jumping into their owners’ arms or kissing them on the lips; they’re engaging in natural behaviors in an unnatural environment and exploring things to satisfy their own curiosity, not your emotional needs.
So, yes. This was a misinterpretation. This was you placing human emotions on a snake. Everybody makes mistakes, but I just feel that had you read a single care sheet and thought for a moment about why the widely-accepted care practices are so widely accepted, this tragedy would not have happened. I hope you take this into consideration before buying another animal because keeping a snake this way will only end in the same emotionally devastating results. I know this hurts to hear- I know you really, truly loved your snake and you did what you thought was best for him. But sometimes what we think is the best because of our emotions isn’t the best for their care. Their physical well being depends on us. They can’t make choices about their care- they are pets. They don’t have that agency. It’s up to us as pet owners to do what’s right, and sometimes that means putting our emotions and desires aside for the sake of their physical health. Trust me, nobody knows that better than me. I lived this.
This is Kaiju. The love of my life. The best thing that’s ever happened to me.
She’s an Argentine black and white tegu, and I thought that I could free-roam her safely and happily. I set things up so that she had humid hides, hot spots, everything. This decision was made with what I thought was her best interest in mind- I thought that because she’s a big, active lizard that free-roaming would be good for her.
And I almost threw up when I did. This is an x-ray of Rex, a tegu who had been free-roamed for much longer than Kaiju. His owners treated him like a king- they gave him what he wanted to eat and let him roam and live with them like part of the family. But this took a toll on Rex, a price paid by his arthritic joints and digestive system and kinked spine. A price he could have paid with his life. I knew then that even though I was trying so hard to take good care of my baby, she was going to suffer if I kept things up. So I went out and got an enclosure and got honest with myself about what she really needed and got over my own ego and ideas to provide what was best for her, not me.
I’m so sorry to be the bearer of this bad news, but it’s the truth. We choose to bring these animals into our home; we take them and we make them ours, and providing the proper environment for them to thrive is the least we can do. This is truly the danger of anthropomorphism; when you start attributing these impossible emotions to your pets, you run the risk of forgetting who and what they really are.
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