Cruelty

2020

Malice

2020

For a long time I have had the urge to get at least one species of Asian colubrid, so I decided on "the Stinking Goddess", aka the Chinese King Ratsnake. I sort of blame Dan Mulleary for this. He made this video where he is unboxing several of these and a couple of the snakes are especially big, beautiful, and of course, very calm. So that became my target species. (I ignored the fact that the animals were probably cold, and thus calm, from the shipping process.) Dan is great to watch by the way since he does so much work with Asian species.

Dan Mulleary with a large Chinese King Ratsnake

I bought a pair of CKRs and they quickly showed me their true personalities. First of all they don't smell particularly bad like I was expecting. I mean it's not as good as the smell of baked bread, but it's not worse than the other stinky colubrids that I keep. The Black ratsnakes that I used to keep a long time ago were particularly foul-smelling.

In terms of handleability the male is slightly easier to handle in that I don't get bitten by him every two seconds like I do when handling the female. The male just tries to squirm away which is not surprising. But at least he only bites occasionally.

The female, who quickly earned the name Malice, doesn't stop biting when she's in my hands. I've tried things like getting her out once or twice a week consistently for a few minutes at a time to try and have some positive handling experiences with her so that she can learn that I'm not here to hurt her but so far I haven't noticed any changes in her behavior. When we have these handling sessions I talk out loud to her hoping that she becomes accustomed to my sight and sound. I sarcastically announce, "Malice, it's playtime!" and maybe she senses the sarcasm and it just angers her more. I don't know. Playtime has become her nickname though and I'm sure that she hates that name, which encourages me to use it often.

Here is a great book to get to learn more about Asian ratsnakes. I got it and was surprised at how many species of Asian ratsnakes I wanted after reading it. So consider yourself warned. Books like this should come with a 10% off coupon that's good at breeders' online stores.

The Asian Ratsnakes and Kin of Greater China, by Kevin R Messenger

Any ways, my Chinese King Ratsnakes are beautiful snakes and I love having them if for no other reason than getting that periodic adrenaline spike when I get them out. And when she is not being tormented by me, Malice will roam the plants and logs in her cage all day and poke her head out over the ledge and watch me as I work. It's both endearing and creepy to see her staring at me with those evil eyes. I am nervous about having 7- or 8-foot long death machines in my collection in a few years so I do hope eventually they get more tractable. For now, there is a lock on their cages so that no one accidentally opens their cages when I'm not around.

If things go smoothly, and they usually don't, I'll be trying to breed them in 2025. And if I get any babies that are even remotely more calm than their parents I will hold onto them and grow them up and who knows? Malice and Cruelty might be on MorphMarket one day and their babies will live here instead. It would be like me sending VHS copies of The Ring to a stranger...