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EstelleLaufeia

New Member
Joined
Sep 21, 2022
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Location
Victoria, Australia
Hi, I’m Estelle. 26 & from Victoria, Australia. Always been interested in getting a snake but my Mum wasn’t a fan. I have two cats & am doing all my research so I can adopt or purchase a snake. It’s been a struggle deciding on if to go for the childrens python, stimson or for MD or an olive python. The only hesitation I have with a larger python is it attacking my cats somehow but it’s something I am not sure it’s a real fear to have.

I’m always very onto it with safety measures so pretty sure I am just paranoid but input on that would be nice. I’m only 5’3 so not sure if a big snake would be a bad idea like big dogs can be sometimes for those that are shorter. Thank you.
 
hey,
If this is your first snake i'd recommend any Antaresia - so thats you Childrens, Stimson and Spotted pythons, they seem to be about the easiest snake you can get and small enough that they couldn't hurt your cats - although I would be more worried about your cats hurting it. It's sort of irrelevant though because your enclosure should be secure enough that this would never be an issue.

Besides that, I don't know if it's the size is as so much as the temperament. I've heard quite a few people say Olives are not a beginner snake for a number of reasons, but mainly that they can be quite 'aggressive' when it comes to food.

If you have no experience, I would start off small and simple. If its a choice between a childrens or a stimson most people would just pick the one they liked the look of better, as they are pretty similar in every other way.

Welcome and good luck!
 
hey,
If this is your first snake i'd recommend any Antaresia - so thats you Childrens, Stimson and Spotted pythons, they seem to be about the easiest snake you can get and small enough that they couldn't hurt your cats - although I would be more worried about your cats hurting it. It's sort of irrelevant though because your enclosure should be secure enough that this would never be an issue.

Besides that, I don't know if it's the size is as so much as the temperament. I've heard quite a few people say Olives are not a beginner snake for a number of reasons, but mainly that they can be quite 'aggressive' when it comes to food.

If you have no experience, I would start off small and simple. If its a choice between a childrens or a stimson most people would just pick the one they liked the look of better, as they are pretty similar in every other way.

Welcome and good luck!

This is good advice. An Antaresia sounds ideal for you. Choose whichever one you like the look and price of most - they're all the same to care for, basically just different paint jobs and prices.

As for large snakes attacking your cats, Olives and Carpets can and do eat cats, but if you keep them separate (which presumably you plan to) it won't be a problem. When I was a stupid young feel (but old enough to be my current height of 6'3") I was almost constricted to death by a large Olive Python, and I've seen large Olives cause pools of blood to come out of large men and put their hands out of action for several days due to bite injury. I now work with very large and aggressive Olives and quite enjoy it, but I have a lot more skill and experience than I did as a young fella and one Olive in particular that I work with (she's actually the snake I most enjoy working with) literally tries to kill me every time I open her tub and I wouldn't let anyone who wasn't highly experienced go anywhere near her, and even her owner prefers to let me deal with her. She could very easily kill someone your size, and even with my level of skill and affection I wouldn't handle that snake if I was your size unless I had other people with me. To be honest I probably shouldn't be working with snakes like that alone even now, but hey, I do a lot of stupid things and have a perfect track record of not dying.

A Carpet would be a better choice for you than an Olive, but I'd suggest an Antaresia for you. Even as someone who loves working with large snake which try to kill me, and despite my favourite individual snake to work with being a large Olive which literally tries to kill me every time I go near her and would make a real mess of most people who tried to work with her, after working with many different types of snakes including American, Asian and African snakes (largely while living outside Australia), my favourite group of snakes to work with is the Antaresia.
 
hey,
If this is your first snake i'd recommend any Antaresia - so thats you Childrens, Stimson and Spotted pythons, they seem to be about the easiest snake you can get and small enough that they couldn't hurt your cats - although I would be more worried about your cats hurting it. It's sort of irrelevant though because your enclosure should be secure enough that this would never be an issue.

Besides that, I don't know if it's the size is as so much as the temperament. I've heard quite a few people say Olives are not a beginner snake for a number of reasons, but mainly that they can be quite 'aggressive' when it comes to food.

If you have no experience, I would start off small and simple. If its a choice between a childrens or a stimson most people would just pick the one they liked the look of better, as they are pretty similar in every other way.

Welcome and good luck!
Hi, thank you for the advice. I appreciate it a lot, I’ll have a look into Antaresia pythons. Yeah that is a big worry of mine, I think they will either be uninterested or cautiously curious thankfully both the cats are very placid but they will always be either fully supervised or seperated when I’m handling.

Oh definitely, I will be making sure I invest in a top notch enclosure & make sure the room I keep it in is also snake proofed in case. I am always paranoid about worst case scenarios, I know it would be rare for that to happen but it is not like it has never happened before so I do worry.

Yeah, it was weird because a few places I read up on did have conflicting reports on if they had just the aggression regarding food, temperament or the both so I figured it’d be worth mentioning that I was looking into them. I’ll go & have a look at the ones you have suggested & make a visit to a reptile shop to see if I can also view/meet some in person too. My aunty has a Stimson but I only held her as a baby so I haven’t got any experience handling them as adults.

This is good advice. An Antaresia sounds ideal for you. Choose whichever one you like the look and price of most - they're all the same to care for, basically just different paint jobs and prices.

As for large snakes attacking your cats, Olives and Carpets can and do eat cats, but if you keep them separate (which presumably you plan to) it won't be a problem. When I was a stupid young feel (but old enough to be my current height of 6'3") I was almost constricted to death by a large Olive Python, and I've seen large Olives cause pools of blood to come out of large men and put their hands out of action for several days due to bite injury. I now work with very large and aggressive Olives and quite enjoy it, but I have a lot more skill and experience than I did as a young fella and one Olive in particular that I work with (she's actually the snake I most enjoy working with) literally tries to kill me every time I open her tub and I wouldn't let anyone who wasn't highly experienced go anywhere near her, and even her owner prefers to let me deal with her. She could very easily kill someone your size, and even with my level of skill and affection I wouldn't handle that snake if I was your size unless I had other people with me. To be honest I probably shouldn't be working with snakes like that alone even now, but hey, I do a lot of stupid things and have a perfect track record of not dying.

A Carpet would be a better choice for you than an Olive, but I'd suggest an Antaresia for you. Even as someone who loves working with large snake which try to kill me, and despite my favourite individual snake to work with being a large Olive which literally tries to kill me every time I go near her and would make a real mess of most people who tried to work with her, after working with many different types of snakes including American, Asian and African snakes (largely while living outside Australia), my favourite group of snakes to work with is the Antaresia.
Thank you for the reply & the advice on Olives. I’m glad I mentioned I was looking at them because this has been very helpful. I did see a few childrens pythons I liked the look of - didn’t realise they have so many variations. I’d definitely be keeping them seperate, I think I’m just a lil nervous about that very small chance of them being an escape artist & finding a dead pet as a result.

Damn that would’ve been scary, I am sorry to hear about your bad experience earlier on & the injuries. That would not be fun to heal up from. I’m so glad that I did mention looking at them on here now, your reply has been super helpful. They sound like a lot of fun to work with but also a lot to handle. I’ve been digging the MD carpet pythons as well but I’m unsure if it’d grow too fast for me to learn with it as it grows.

I will definitely be doing more research into Antaresia. I think the reason I was leaning more towards a bigger & more complex snake than Antaresia is because I enjoy learning as well as a challenge so was open to a snake that might be more complex & learning first hand (after researching) as it grows up with me but after reading your reply about Olives they do not seem like the best choice for me. Thank you again for the help.
 
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Thank you for the reply & the advice on Olives. I’m glad I mentioned I was looking at them because this has been very helpful. I did see a few childrens pythons I liked the look of - didn’t realise they have so many variations. I’d definitely be keeping them seperate, I think I’m just a lil nervous about that very small chance of them being an escape artist & finding a dead pet as a result.

Damn that would’ve been scary, I am sorry to hear about your bad experience earlier on & the injuries. That would not be fun to heal up from. I’m so glad that I did mention looking at them on here now, your reply has been super helpful. They sound like a lot of fun to work with but also a lot to handle. I’ve been digging the MD carpet pythons as well but I’m unsure if it’d grow too fast for me to learn with it as it grows.

I will definitely be doing more research into Antaresia. I think the reason I was leaning more towards a bigger & more complex snake than Antaresia is because I enjoy learning as well as a challenge so was open to a snake that might be more complex & learning first hand (after researching) as it grows up with me but after reading your reply about Olives they do not seem like the best choice for me. Thank you again for the help.

Haha, no sympathy needed for me; as a stupid young fella I found it fun, as do typical boys who think they're immortal and invincible, and decades later I laugh when thinking about it.

Snake people usually laugh about being bitten, especially when there's a lot of blood. If this doesn't sound like your persona, I definitely recommend Antaresia!

Generally speaking, Olives as adults handle well and many are referred to as 'gentle giants', but they're all individuals and sometimes the gentle ones are the most dangerous because you'll have your guard down on that one day when you didn't wash your hands after playing with the cat and the snake goes into feeding mode and does its best to kill you. I don't have that problem with the aggressive one because before walking into the room I already know what she's going to do so I'm on guard before she knows I'm there.

A large Carpet bite will usually not be a big deal or particularly painful, but if it's on the hand or any joint it can be very painful and potentially put your hand out of action for a few days. Typically you'll be fine, I'm talking about the sort of thing you may never experience, but it's a possibility, and I've seen countless examples (and many years ago I've personally had hands out of action thanks to Carpets, but I'm sure you'd be more careful than I was back then, and it mainly happened to me because I wasn't careful and I worked with a lot of snakes, heck, as a teenager I was stupid enough not to even use feeding tongs!).

If you want a Carpet you'll probably be fine, they will probably recognise your cats as food (by smell, so that includes things which smell like cats, and sometimes Carpets even eat things like a blanket a cat was sitting on, or a shirt someone was wearing while cuddling a cat), but plenty of people keep Carpets and cats in the same house, and most often there aren't any significant problems. When I was a teenager living in the same house as my mother and her cats only one of them was killed by one of my snakes... and she was supposed to keep her cats out of that area anyway...

At the end of the day, if you really want a Carpet, get a Carpet, if you're careful you will most likely have no trouble. Most people who just have one or two snakes don't have any such incidents. I may be making it sound like mishaps are very common, but I'm talking about what I've seen in my experiences with snakes involving hundreds of snake keepers over decades on three different continents, and most of those characters, myself included, are no doubt far more crazy than you are.

I'd also say that life is too short to be scared of being bitten by a Carpet Python, and hey, of all the friends I've had who worked with snakes, only one has been killed by a python ;)
 
I will agree with our friend that olives can be a bit much to handle due to their size however I wouldn't let size alone distract you from choosing an animal you like.

I have a few larger carpets, close to 3 metres, and my girl friends handle them without issue, one of my gf's is just 4ft 11.

I have always lived by the guide that you need 1 person for every metre of snake to safely handle them. Obviously this is not a hard and fast rule, but a safety guide I like to use and recommend, That said I can and do handle my animals alone but do so accepting the risks and with great care.

Choose an animal you like, and do your research, people like @Sdaji are a great resource of knowledge that should be taken advatage of at every opportunity as he can guide you throw almost every problem you may encounter.

as for your cats, make sure you remove them from the room when handling your snake to avoid "accidents", no amount of training or perceived trust will ever eliminate the risk of incident and a larger snake will never not think of them as food. Always ensure you use some type of hand sanitiser or soap prior to handling so you no longer have the scent on cat on your hands.

I say if you like the look of a carpet more, go for it, just remember the bigger the snake, the bigger the enclosure, meals etc. And you will have plenty of time to learn, it takes a good 2-3 years for a snake to grow to a decent size and by then you should have learnt most of what you need to know.

You have so many options, it's simple really, choose the one you like most and learn how to deal with your choice responsibly.
 
I also highly recommend Antaresia, I have 5 and just today I introduced my 2 little granddaughters to a Childrens python because I trust him to be totally harmless. My son has Carpets also and they are fine but being much larger are quite a handful.
One piece of advice I will give that non-one has mentioned, don't let the petshop talk you into buying a glass enclosure as you will have trouble controlling the heat , you should buy (or build your own if handy ) a wooden enclosure
 
Welcome to the forum Estelle. Glad you joined before buying! Can you update us on your final choice?;)
 

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