I was reminded today: Snakes have really teeny brains.
Snakes are stupid.
(But cute!)
So I was feeding 6-month-old ball python Seymour, my classroom pet, today. Seymour is a small snake–barely over a foot long–but he’s got the thick, heavy build of a python. As a result, he eats larger mice than my year-old, three-foot-long corn snake Cleo.
Seymour tends to get very excited when he smells mouse. He’ll take them out of your hands, given the opportunity. I dropped him in the feeding cage, and he, smelling mouse everywhere, enters with mouth agape and promptly attacks the first thing he can: the tissue paper bedding. Brilliant. So, I take Stupid Seymour out of the cage and into his cage to wait for him to uncoil and realize the tissue isn’t food. Once he releases his “prey,” I pick him up to plop him in the feed cage again. This time, he whips around, mouth agape, and lands on the first thing he can: my finger. Frick! Those dozens of needle-sharp, backward-hooked teeth sink into my knuckle and it friggin’ HURTS!
He wouldn’t let go of me, and pulling away from snake as well as pushing into snake hurt like hell. Finally, I blew in his face, and he released my finger. He finally got to eat the mouse, and I got ot go nurse my wounds.
My knuckle is now purple. But I have a cool story to tell the kiddos tomorrow.