Introducing Rogue

This handsome devil is Rogue. Rogue is a cornsnake, and he's about a year old. He is the smallest of Andrew's 4 snakes, and the one that used to scare me the most. Zeus and Athena are big laid back ball pythons, and Kaylee is a texas rat snake, and all three of them had been handled more than Rogue. He used to shake his little tail like he thought he was a rattle snake, and curl up into a striking pose, or quickly slither away whenever anybody tried to touch him or pick him up. Though the logical part of me says his bite likely wouldn't hurt all that much, I really don't want to find out. When I first met Andrew I would take all the other snakes out, but never the little guy. One day a couple weeks ago, Andrew had him out because he was cleaning his tank, and with Andrew doing the tricky part of catching him, and then handing him over to me, the little bugger was quite civil. I figured it's important to handle him more often so that he doesn't turn into a big nasty bitey snake.

Andrew is currently babysitting a full size corn snake, and we certainly don't want him to get that big and be cranky about being handled, so the answer is simply to handle him more. It's been a pet project of mine, I take him out for a couple minutes every time that I'm here, and he's really gotten much better. I don't even use the hook to catch him most times now, just reach in and take hold of him.

Before I started handling him, he didn't even have a name. Andrew just called him the little guy. I picked the name Rogue for him, and Andrew agreed to it this week. I like to think that makes him part mine too. Anyways, that's the most exciting thing that happened in my night, so I thought I would write about it.