An Introduction

When we first considered getting a pet together a snake wasn't our first choice. We went through the positive and negatives of the usual suspects - dogs, cats, fish, rodents - and eventually we decided that a dog was ambitious, just not practical for our situation. It was too expensive, too much maintenance, too much mess. I'm sure our housemates wouldn't have appreciated the increase in animal hair around the house (I have two dogs at my parent's house, and regularly come back covered in hair).

So we cast our net wider, looking at more unconventional pets. It seemed that reptiles fit the bill a little closer - comparatively low-maintenance, relatively inexpensive and unlikely to cause a large amount of mess.

But which reptile? Dragons were awesome in that they would happily scamper about and potentially chill on your shoulder. He (Johno) wanted a turtle, but I argued that cleaning a tank was a little too much work (one of the reasons I stayed away from keeping fish) despite their undeniable cuteness. Skinks creeped me out a tiny bit.

Snakes, however! There's something elegant and rewarding in owning a snake. It feels like a piece of the wild, akin to patting a wolf or tiger. Dogs will play bite, cats will scratch at you to feed them - but there is no real alpha presence to a snake. You cannot lead it by posturing or demanding. You can only grow with it.

Into our home came our little slithering bundle of joy - an as-of-yet-unsexed Antaresia Maculosa. We had bantered back and forth about a name until I remembered a story about an artist who didn't have a name for the first three months of his life, and how he did pretty okay at bringing laughter to the world (or at least, to me). So he became our Ramón.

Spots and all.