Thursday, August 21, 2008

My Husband's "Stash"...

or more about the snakes.

Now, I'm sure I've lost a few of you already with a start like that, but Becca wanted to hear more about the snakes my husband mentioned in my last post.

As you most likely know by now, several of the males in my family are quite enthusiastic about reptiles. If this is news to you, you can read more here, here, here, here, or here. (The last one's my favorite.) But yes, Becca, he also has a menagerie of pet snakes. So this morning I took my camera over to his shop where he keeps his slithery pals for a brief photo shoot. You'll have to excuse the poor quality of these photos but he only had a minute and snakes move more than yarn.

These are male boa constrictors...

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And this is one of his female boas.

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Ain't she a beaut?!

When the time is right, she gets a visit from one of the males. If they hit it off, they hang out together for a while... Ken sets the mood with some dim lighting and soft music... and 100 or so days later... baby boas. Did you know that boas don't lay eggs, but instead give birth to 10 - 20 squirming little replicas? If all goes well, and unfortunately the snakes aren't nearly as reliable as you'd think, he can then sell the babies for a practical fortune. Or so I've heard.

Behind him you can see one of the several, uh, cages he has in his office. He has a pretty decent variety including one rattlesnake that he caught and is going to relocate. But she hasn't been too happy about her current living conditions, nor does she seem to like people oddly enough, so I couldn't take a picture of her.

Did you know you can buy and sell snakes over the internet and that Fed Ex will actually transport them? Yep, really! Just like buying yarn. Almost.

This next one is a bit more rare...

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It's an albino boa...

and I'm betting I could knit an entire outfit out of Noro for what this gal cost.

Just saying.

11 comments:

km said...

Oh, you can be so glad those don't live in your home. When I rented a room from a family in college, they had removed their linen closet and replaces the doors with glass. I don't know what lived there, but one of them was yellow.

For our little gecko, we once ordered crickets on-line. That was a mistake. There's just 500 of them hopping around in the box. =0) We won't be ordering snakes online.

Tammy said...

Ohhh dear! I think I like YOUR stash better than your husband's! YIKES!

And feel free to knit me a pair of those beautiful socks while you are sitting and watching the Olympics and doing nothing else with your day! *wink*

Blessings,
Tammy ~@~

Yarnhog said...

Awesome pictures!

I used to have a Columbian boa who looked exactly like his girl--same size and all. My husband made me get rid of her when our last baby was born. He seemed to feel that large snakes and small babies don't mix well. I don't know why; she didn't escape all that often. ;)

Anonymous said...

I am not going to be looking at the FedEx truck the same ever again, I can tell you that.

marit said...

Yikes! I agree with "mom"- I like your stash better!
I always thought that snakes were slimey and slippery, but I went to Golden Gate Park once, at some snake department(25 years ago- I have no idea where it was!), and we got to touch and hold the snakes, one was a veeery long, veeery heavy creature(no, I didn't pay much attention to what kind it was, either!) I was really surprised to find out it was so dry and warm and smooth!

Dawn said...

There in his office? I bet he doesn't get to many disgruntled people going in there!:) I posted about our bearded dragon yesterday...guess we were having a reptile blog day! I gotta say I like your stash a lot better!

Anonymous said...

ewww!

Anonymous said...

Ummm....I really don't know what to say.

I understand Boas eat live rodents.

Thanks for not blogging about that.

The Meitler Family said...

I'm going to have show K these pics. Very cool. And, big bucks to be made, too. Who could ask for more?

Lydee said...

That's awesome Tammy.

And I'm glad you all live 3000mi away from us. :-)

Octopus Knits said...

Hee, hee! Very nice, though it's got to be rough for snakes to be transported through the mail...

I enjoyed your husband's "interview" and agree that your Hedera socks are quite intricate and lovely :)