Lightning
Elder Geek
My 5-year old nephew wanted a pet snake but no one else in the family, especially his parents, wanted anything to do with snakes. He and I began an educational journey to learn about snakes and what would be required to keep one. A few weeks later, a friend, who knew of our interest, called and said she had access to a 2ft. corn snake that needed a new home; did we want it? We accepted, even though we had no facilities for a snake yet. She brought it over that evening, 11/6/14, in a pillow case. We transferred it to one of our pillow cases and it spent the night in the pillow case in a laundry sink. My nephew came over the next morning, promptly named the snake Lightning, and we began the process of doing just about everything wrong. We handled Lightning multiple times that first day and he never offered to strike or bite, and has not to this day. We also discovered that we actually had a 3ft. corn snake. At the end of the afternoon we put him back in the pillow case and back in the laundry sink. We had searched Craig's List and found a used 35gal. aquarium which we picked up that night. The following day I cleaned the aquarium and placed newspaper on the bottom, added a water bowl and a couple of cardboard box hides and introduced Lightning to his new home. The first thing he did was to have a long drink of water. I had not yet found these forums (thank you to all who post such good advice/experience here) and based on advice from the local Petco reptile expert, bought a light fixture and a black heat bulb. Within a week or so, I found these forums, bought a UTH, and ditched the light. We continued to handle Lightning at every opportunity. He turned out to be a 3ft. normal corn snake as you can see from the pics. We do not know his age or gender but my nephew has declared that he is a male. 
The next important task seemed to be his first meal. Based on pictures I took, the Petco rep suggested hoppers. We probably tried the first hopper at the end of the first week. Lightning did not appear to be interested. After several failed tries resulting in wasted hoppers, I decided to try a pinkie at the end of the second week. Lightning took it and we have never looked back. We moved rapidly from pinkies to fuzzies to hoppers and stayed on one hopper a week till mid-January 2015. Then I began wondering what the correct size/weight of his meals should be. Thanks to these forums again, I found the Munson feeding plan. And I quickly realized that I did not know Lightning's weight. Using the kitchen scales I found his weight was 200g, and according to the Munson plan, he should be eating adult mice. The hoppers were about half the weight that I should have been feeding. We began feeding adult mice once a week in the latter half of January; they have averaged about 20g. Since that time we have fed Lightning a total of 429g of mice and he now weighs 315g and has probably gained a couple of inches in length.
In late November 2014, Lightning did not come out of his hide for a couple of days which was very unusual. I lifted the hide and saw the most miserable looking snake I could imagine. I came back to these forums and was relieved to find that he was most likely in blue preparing to shed. He confirmed that by having a pretty good shed on 12/8/14. There was a short length of old skin at the end of his tail which I easily removed using wet paper towels which he crawled through. His second shed was 83 days later and was composed of numerous small pieces of skin, none over a couple of inches long. His 3rd, 4th and 5th sheds have come at 49, 50, and 54 day intervals and have been perfect. I'm not sure what happened on the second.
I don't know if this is a common experience, but Lightning almost always waits until he is out of the aquarium before he poops. His first poop was almost 1.5 months after we got him and now, of course, he is on a pretty regular schedule, usually 4 days after he eats. When I first get him out, either to eat or just to play, I usually clear off my sink counter, fill the sink with cool water and put him on the counter. If it is feeding day, he eats there. If it is poop day, he usually positions his vent over the sink and poops in the water making cleanup vey easy. He has eaten in front of as many as eight people at one time, most of them children, so he is not very shy.
So, my now 6-year old nephew (actually great-great-nephew; yeah, imagine my age) is a happy snake owner (I am just the caretaker), and we both have learned more than I could have imagined about corn snakes. Of course we think we have the best snake ever.
Sorry for the really long post!
The next important task seemed to be his first meal. Based on pictures I took, the Petco rep suggested hoppers. We probably tried the first hopper at the end of the first week. Lightning did not appear to be interested. After several failed tries resulting in wasted hoppers, I decided to try a pinkie at the end of the second week. Lightning took it and we have never looked back. We moved rapidly from pinkies to fuzzies to hoppers and stayed on one hopper a week till mid-January 2015. Then I began wondering what the correct size/weight of his meals should be. Thanks to these forums again, I found the Munson feeding plan. And I quickly realized that I did not know Lightning's weight. Using the kitchen scales I found his weight was 200g, and according to the Munson plan, he should be eating adult mice. The hoppers were about half the weight that I should have been feeding. We began feeding adult mice once a week in the latter half of January; they have averaged about 20g. Since that time we have fed Lightning a total of 429g of mice and he now weighs 315g and has probably gained a couple of inches in length.
In late November 2014, Lightning did not come out of his hide for a couple of days which was very unusual. I lifted the hide and saw the most miserable looking snake I could imagine. I came back to these forums and was relieved to find that he was most likely in blue preparing to shed. He confirmed that by having a pretty good shed on 12/8/14. There was a short length of old skin at the end of his tail which I easily removed using wet paper towels which he crawled through. His second shed was 83 days later and was composed of numerous small pieces of skin, none over a couple of inches long. His 3rd, 4th and 5th sheds have come at 49, 50, and 54 day intervals and have been perfect. I'm not sure what happened on the second.
I don't know if this is a common experience, but Lightning almost always waits until he is out of the aquarium before he poops. His first poop was almost 1.5 months after we got him and now, of course, he is on a pretty regular schedule, usually 4 days after he eats. When I first get him out, either to eat or just to play, I usually clear off my sink counter, fill the sink with cool water and put him on the counter. If it is feeding day, he eats there. If it is poop day, he usually positions his vent over the sink and poops in the water making cleanup vey easy. He has eaten in front of as many as eight people at one time, most of them children, so he is not very shy.
So, my now 6-year old nephew (actually great-great-nephew; yeah, imagine my age
) is a happy snake owner (I am just the caretaker), and we both have learned more than I could have imagined about corn snakes. Of course we think we have the best snake ever.Sorry for the really long post!
