Moar Snek Updet

Sir Toby is settling in okay. Every night at precisely 9 o'clock he comes out, goes for his water bowl, then chills out in his basking spot until he fucks off again at midnight. It's weird how all of our reptiles have their weird little habits and rituals. Hugo would always get up for a drink at midnight, then go back to sleep.

Toby is a bit bitchy. You can take him out and handle him okay on most days, but if you go anywhere near him when he's hungry or preparing to shed his skin and he'll hiss at you. It's all just for show, you can still pick him up, but he'll keep on hissing. He'll let you know that he's not in the mood for any of this. But he's reasonably tame for an adolescent snake, he doesn't try to bite anyone and on a good day he'll let you take him anywhere. We had him in the car, in my backpack, he was my scarf when I prepared stuff in the kitchen, he's cool like that. Well. Or he used to be until one day, where he sat on me and out of nowhere my cat showed up and decided she's gonna sit on that. And the snake completely lost all of his shit. Something, anything just suddenly appearing from above will trigger all of his instincts, because he'll think he's about to get eaten by a predator. I threw away the cat, Claire took Toby, who immediately started biting her, chaos ensued and everyone's day was ruined.

Eventually, Toby pretended to be a ball python and calmed down a little, so Claire put him back in his vivarium. We took him back out the next day. You know, keep on working with him, handle the fucker, make it normal for him to be out and sit around with people. He didn't like it very much and I've never been so irrationally scared in my entire life.

This is our carpet python. Look at Mrs. Kitten's arm. Then look at the python. That snake is more than twice as long as we are tall. I'll hold that thing if I have to. I can handle her and we're both cool. I'm not normally afraid of reptiles.

Toby hissed and really didn't want to come out, but Claire was having none of it. Snek put up with it, snaked all over her, did what snakes do. Then she gave him to me and he went completely still. Didn't move a muscle, made absolutely no noise, just froze and played dead. Staring. One minute goes by, two minutes, then he lets out that incredibly long, drawn-out hiss. Yeah, I get it, you don't like me, because I'm the asshole with the cat. Claire takes him off me again and Toby is perfectly cool. He looks over to me, stretches out, rests his head on my leg, immediately freezes again and, moments later, starts hissing.

And I thought, "Okay, this is it, this is how I'm gonna die." He stared at me, he hissed, basically going, "Just move a tenth of an inch, I dare you! Do it and I'm gonna fuck you up!" I sat perfectly still and I cannot really explain why the fuck I was so nervous to begin with. What the fuck was that pathetic spaghetti gonna do, give me two tiny pin-pricks and immediately fuck off again? I saw the bite marks he left on Claire after the cat jumped on him and they were almost invisible. I've had worse scratches from our cats and even our beardies. Don't get me started on the claw marks Hugo would leave all over you just from climbing around.

I'm not afraid to get hurt, either. Claire and I were joking and dicking around while we were getting our tattoos. I was involved in half a dozen motorcycle accidents. I've broken bones. I'm being forced to watch Coronation Street three times a week. I can handle pain. What I can't deal with is our species' innate fear of the unknown. I've never been bitten by a snake. I don't know what it feels like, I don't know how to tell whether or not he's gonna go for it, I have no idea what he's thinking or what he's going to do. And for some fucked up reason it absolutely freaks me out. He sits there, perfectly motionless, stares at me through these red, unblinking eyes and just hisses. He never stops hissing.

Look at him! Could he possibly be any less scary?

I'll hold our giant-ass carpet python and drag her enormous ass around the house if I have to. I babysit our snakes all the time when Claire cleans their vivs. When I met Toby at the pet shop, he sat on my head and crawled all over my face while I was chatting with baffled customers. When he just sat there, stared at me, hissed and basically did absolutely nothing, I completely bricked it. I think we're both gonna be freaked out by each other for a couple days now.

In other news, I strongly believe that all animals are idiots. Our carpet python lives in Hugo's tank now, where she gets a whole lot of space to climb on stuff. She'll climb on a log, she'll climb and sit on her lamp, she'll even climb the freaking cage lock. Then she sits there for five minutes, goes to sleep, slides off and pancakes on the floor. Carpet pythons are supposed to be good at climbing, but this one just keeps on falling off of shit. I bet if you're in the jungle and just sit and wait for five minutes, you'll see snakes and other random animals falling out of trees all the time. They just never show that in the nature documentaries, because it ruins the whole narrative about them being deadly, gracious predators.

I mean, my stupid cat constantly falls off shit when she goes to sleep. She'll sit on one of the reptile tanks, because they're nice and warm, then she does that stupid cat thing where they go all liquid and boneless, falls asleep and slides right over the edge - splat! That shit you've seen in The Lion King? All lies. I bet Mufasa took a nap at the edge of a cliff and just fell off all by himself. I dunno. I've never watched that movie and only know the stuff they show on YouTube, but I'm pretty sure there's a decent amount of lions, which just fall off of things when they sleep and that's why they're endangered. Loads of people die each year when they fall out of their beds, so we're all stupid, too. But animals are supposed to be good at these things. They're not. They really fucking aren't.