Iris

2022

I got my first Brazilian Rainbow boa in the mid-90s as a baby from an ad someone had posted in the back of Reptiles magazine. I wish I could remember who the person was. The little female snake did awesome for us and grew up with lots of people handling her and she never showed the slightest sign of discontent. Years later when I heard people say that BRBs were very bitey I couldn't believe it, but of course I had a small sample size of experience.

1997, my first Brazilian Rainbow boa

Sometime in the early 2000's I got a second BRB, a male, from someone locally here in Utah but again, it has been too long ago for me to remember who. The male had a lighter orange to it and was equally tame and handleable. At the time there was a certain look to lighter colored BRBs in the hobby that was referred to as "Lamar's phase" and there was some thought that the male was of that type/phase/variety/whatever. I never found out for sure.

2003, Comparison of both Brazilian Rainbow boas

I had hopes to breed them but there was a big setback for me when the female was free-roaming the room and got stuck trying to get under the door. I took the door off the hinges to get her free but she had damaged her spine in the process and was permanently disfigured from that. A local vet said that surgery was the only option and that the odds of her recovering completely were only about 50/50. So I didn't have that done. Given her condition I didn't dare try and breed her. Still, she lived for many years after that.

I lost both BRBs in the early 2010s. Living in Utah it is extremely dry and the relative humidity is usually about 28-30%. This is way too dry for BRBs so I was misting them frequently. However, I was keeping them in glass-front Vision cages and using newspaper as substrate and that just wasn't a good setup for maintaining high enough humidity for the animals to thrive so both of them died of respiratory problems.

I wasn't going to try high-humidity animals again in my home but as the years have gone on and I've spent more time getting better equipment, cages, and methods, I decided I was ready to try BRBs again so in early 2023 I bought a baby female. Almost 25 years after the first one.