Sunny is my newest addition. A friend of mine works at a nearby snake shop, and when I went to see her at work a month or so ago I spotted this lovely gal in one of the bottom tanks. I've always loved pituophis (pine/bull/gopher snakes) but never had one of my own. I took her out just to hold for a few minutes...and, well, I suppose you know the rest!
I asked the owner of the shop to probe her to find out her gender...The easiest and safest way to determine the gender of a snake is to gently insert a small probe into their vent and see how deep it goes. The probe will go MUCH deeper on a male snake. A less accurate method is to look at the tail. In general, males have a longer, narrowed tail than females. Her tail says "Male", but she was probed several times, and she is clearly female. This is good news to me because I'd like for her to produce some hybrid babies with Kostya when he's big enough. (Probably next year!) Hybrids of corn snakes and any snake of the pituophis genus are called "Turbo Corns".
One of the things that has always drawn me to pituophis is their attitude. They tend to be loud hissers, and they tend to hiss a LOT. When I picked Sunflower up in the shop, she gave a BIG hiss, and I was delighted. When I got her home, she became the mellowest snake I've ever seen. I was actually concerned that she might be sick at first because she was SO docile. Nope, it turns out I just picked the mellowest gopher snake in the world. That's OK, I love her pretty yellow and orange coloring, and she is a joy to handle.
Enough rambling, here she is!
Her pretty face:
These aren't the greatest photos, I know. I had her out and was planning to take more, but she looked like she was about to poop, so I hastily put her away! She's a little over five feet long now, and could make it to as long as eight feet!
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