Lizards and Diamond

After a weekend at my Aunt and Uncle's in Springfield chasing skinks, Aiden decided that he wanted a pet lizard. As soon as we got home, he ran over to Grandma's to try to catch a lizard. Of course the neighborhood kids all thought this was a great idea, and soon there were four of them running around trying to catch a lizard.

As I was sitting out on the deck relaxing from a lack of sleep and a long drive home, the kids come running back with their jar yelling "we caught it, we caught it!" All four of them are talking excitedly at the same time and are so happy with themselves. This is when I discover that "it" isn't a lizard at all. It is a baby king snake. Great...now what do I do. Snakes don't actually bother me, but I'm not sure I want one as a pet. I was okay with a lizard, they eat bugs.

So I try to think of a way out of this without actually saying no. I tell Aiden that he can't just keep a snake in a jar. What do they eat? How big will it get? What do they need to survive? It wouldn't be fair to take a baby snake out of the wild and make it into a pet if you didn't know how to care for it. He says okay and the four kids run inside to the computer room and start doing research. The little boogers come back with all kinds of information! Now I'm stuck. They did the research, they got the habitat ready, and now I have to say it's okay to keep him. My only hope is that when it actually comes to feeding the snake they won't want to do it. It's too small to eat even pinkie mice, so the mice will have to be cut before we feed him.

A few days later we head to the local pet store to buy frozen mice to feed to the snake. I'm trying the whole time not to be squeamish about this. I've dissected frogs and fetal pigs in biology for pete's sake. I should be able to handle a tiny mouse. We tried to feed him that night, but apparently he wasn't hungry. So I told Aiden that if he doesn't eat something by Monday, we'd have to let him go so that he could fend for himself. This was on Wednesday. On Friday we're getting ready to pack the kids up for a week at Nana's. While I'm busy doing laundry and such, Aiden decided to feed the snake on his own. He cut up the mouse and fed the snake all by himself. Maybe I should have acted squeamish about the mice!!

So now we have a pet snake named Diamond that could grow to be 6 feet long and live for 20 years. Sometimes I hate the Internet and the ease of which information can be found!