Considering a corn snake or similar as a pet...amongst other things!

mystra

meritaten wrote: »

my daughter kept a corn snake - she had it nicely tamed, but everytime I picked it up it peed on me!
her rats were most amusing! I liked them! even though the male had a thing for lighters and used to nick anyones lighter and hide it.
my fave pet of hers was George the Bermuda Python - he was about 5 foot and used to coil up on my lap then slide his head down to my foot and i would swing my foot - he would let me do this for about half an hour then slide up and go to sleep on my lap. her vet said the most fun snake was a boa as they were most intelligent snakes and when tamed would play with you!
corn snakes are ok if you just want them in a tank - pythons will interact with you though and they are beautiful and feel gorgeous! but all snakes are wild - they arent domesticated and you have to handle them properly if you want to tame them.

my last hamster would wee on me, and when it got old i swear it was possessed as it would hiss!!

I wouldn't mind mind a python either actually, i've heard many different things about corns and pythons, one's always better than the other in some way! So hard to make up my mind, i would love interaction, i don't want something to just sit in its tank and get handled for showing off's sake. But then a friend of a friend of a friend has a corn snake... and apparently he's very sweet and cuddles up to her while the tellys on!

Jellicat

mystra wrote: »

How long do they take to become fully grown out of interest? May work in my favour the idea of a relatively baby-sized snake... corns get to about 4-5 feet (?) and they're quite thin, so less scary than say a python... just trying to think how the landlord/estate agent will react when i ask and want to be well prepared. We plan to stay in this flat until we can afford to buy, which may be a while. I just have visions of me asking and them assuming i'm going to bring an anaconda to the flat!!

Any issues you could see the landlord/letting agent having with it and what could help pursuade them? We have a pretty good relationship with the agents and never speak to the landlord themselves as they deal with it all thru the agents.

LOL yes I am like that too. Its worth getting any pets written into your lease so they can't turn around and say no after you've bought. Most people are OK, we had "no pets" on one lease of ours and we had to hide all our animals except our cockatiels who are in such a massive indoor aviary cage it was not possible. The letting agent didn't care and was chatting to them and saying how cute they were. The problem is that a lot of people don't see snakes as quite so cute lol.

Just underline that snakes don't make any noise, don't smell (well the poo smells but they only poo like 2X a week so its easy to clean up as they do it), won't do any damage to the house etc etc. Its basically like keeping fish, they are enclosed in a tank and can really do no harm. If they ask what happens if the snake escapes just say you will have a lock on the vivarium, and that the snake is small and non-aggressive and shy so even if it were to escape it would do no damage. If they ask what it eats say "frozen food" and leave it at that, unless they ask you to elaborate

Size wise its hard to say. I have had Loki since 2006 and he is approximately 3.5 feet long now, but he is a male and they tend to be smaller, also he went missing for six months so he didn't eat, so he's probably quite small for a corn. Snakes grow throughout their lives but the biggest growth period is in their first few years, up to the age of 3 maybe. If you are concerned about size males are always smaller, but even most females will rarely outgrow five feet. Because corns are so small bodied and slender they don't seem as large as their length, if you see what I mean. A royal python of the same length looks so much bigger because they are chunky fat things