80 minute feed + Super adorable!

Beyond ridiculous. Seriously, Ramón, playing with your food is distinctly ungentlemanly behaviour. 80 minutes is an obscenely long time for him to be eating - generally he'll have it within 5-10 minutes and have it completely down within 15. 20 at a stretch. It just seemed as though he couldn't find the head, kept eating from the wrong end and didn't learn anything from it.

He's a good snake, really, he's just a little.. special... sometimes.

CONTENT WARNING: There is some blood in this video. But the rat was dead before I gave it to him, so chill, just think of it as a raspberry filled marshmellow or something.

But after all that icky, here's some photos of him being absolutely adorable in his heart tin.

I bought it at Kmart for $4, and he loves being in it more than any of the other hides I've put in his viv. It sits just at the edge of his heat mat so I suppose it gets quite cozy in there. There's also an electronic tealight that I put in there to fill up space in there and also to make it all pretty for when I take photos. I'll have to get a vid of it at some point.

The brown thing under the tin is a loose tile from the patio outside that had been warming in the sun. I brought it in so that he could be cozy (because it's still a little cold inside the house) while we handled him :)

Delicate moments

Just some photos of us handling Ramón.

Home Sweet Home (Part 2)

So now that we had the vivarium built, it seemed to us that it was looking a little.. plain. It needed a little pizzazz. A little je ne sais quoi. 

Le boring.

We collaborated on the background - I found a nice jungley photo (the one in the background of this blog) and trimmed it to spec, which Johno had printed at his work. Took him about an hour (or less) to put it on, even going over the vents to cover them. It came out beautifully!

Ooooooooh!

The current hides, we realised, were going to be too small for Ramón when he reached adulthood, but looking around (in pet stores and online) it seemed as though there weren't really many cost-effective ones that we liked. So off we went to Kmart to see if we could find something a little more suitable. A turned-over pot would have done nicely, but it wouldn't really have fit with the aesthetic we wanted for the vivarium. We did, however, find a very ingenious cold-hide :3

NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA

The eye-holes were open when we bought it, so Johno popped the lenses out of an old pair of sunnies and hot-glued them in. It is now dubbed the Batcave. We also found a nice bamboo utensil-holder (made for holding ladles and other stuff) in the kitchen section which we thought could serve nicely as a larger hide for him. Unfortunately, it looked really out of place next to the rough branches and dark brown substrate. So I took to it with some paint and muddy water after we both had a go at it with saw, file and knife. 

We also cut off a part of it so that it would sit flat. 

In the picture it looks really obviously done, but..

It looks heaps good next to everything else!

His larger (he has two) water dish is just a granite feeding dish for reptiles. The substrate is Kritter's Crumble. He also has a verandah, which is basically a wooden placemat over the top of the heat cord, to stop him from coming into too much contact with the actual cord. 

The final result!

The thermometer to the right of the cage takes the temp for the cold side, as well as having a node just on the  basking spot on a knot in the leftmost branch. The heat cord is on a separate thermostat, so it keeps it well warm on the ground. It does tend to dry out quite a bit with the open front, so regular spritzing is a necessity (at least in winter) to keep the humidity above 60%.

Basking temperature node

Much easier to spritz directly through the grill. 

That was pretty much it. A few days later we put Ramón in - he was a bit wary at first but he'd fully settled in  48 hours later. 

We let him explore on his own, but it took him a while [i.e, FOREVER] to slither out.

And then of course he stayed in the toilet roll for a good half hour.

Home Sweet Home (Part 1)

Ramón's vivarium was a point of long discussion between the two of us. Even though we spent most of a week discussing it, we still ended up spending a good 4 hours in Bunnings weighing up our options. Luckily, Johno's parents gave us a simple solution.

They had recently reorganised their laundry room, which freed up an old MDF shelving unit that Johno had made for them years before. Turned on its side, it was perfect. the wood provided excellent insulation and heat/moisture resistance. We removed one of the shelves and used the other to cordon off an area for accessories storage. His parents also provided us with a large branch that was recently cut from a tree in their garden. It took us two lazy weekend afternoon session to put the vivarium together.

We cut the branch in two to make it look a little more interesting

Johno did most of the work really, cutting holes for the vents and generally doing all those handy man things that he does. I mostly helped stabilise it while he was doing those things. 

Clearly, I had the harder job.

The rest wasn't too hard to install. Since our heat lamp was caged (the girl at the store assured us that it would be safe for Ramón to be direct contact with it) we decided to seal the top with acrylic and make the front a grill to provide ventilation - mostly for the summer months when it gets quite warm. 

Storage shelf, acrylic top and grill front

Right now it's winter, so we make sure to cover the front with a towel so the vivarium stays nicely at 30°-32°C (hot end) and 18°-24°C (cool end) even when it drops below 10° at night.

Heat lamp mounted to an offcut

 The idea was to at the heat lamp on an angle at the crux of the leftmost branch so he had a nice basking spot, but also heat up the upper parts of the rightmost branch so that it would help spread and retain heat throughout the vivarium. 

Basking spot

We also bought some garden downlights (the kind you attach to fences and things) to provide some cool night lighting.

Down lights

Looks pretty good on, too.

Pimpinnnn'!

Johno also had the bright idea of sealing the top with draft stopper tape!

You can also see the internal hinges we bought. 

After all that it was simply a matter of putting all the other accessories on, like handles and locks. 

I was really more of an.. "Artistic Director".

Decorating the vivarium was a different sort of joy all in itself! To be continued!