Jinx

1997

Acquired	1998
Source	Tracy Barker, VPI

When I got Jinx from VPI I put her in a cage with a hide, a water bowl, and newspaper for substrate. But I ran into a problem. She wouldn't eat. I was buying live fuzzy mice and when I put them in her cage she would just move away from them. Somehow I got the idea that I should cut two holes in the sides of her plastic bin and put a piece of pvc through the holes so that she could climb up there and survey her domain like a queen. Once I did that, she assumed the pose usually taken by green tree pythons and from the perch she began eating just fine. So now I consider the snakes feeling of security when I'm setting up young animals.

As far as breeding Jinx, I've paired her a few times with Pirate Hans but I really haven't done much to provide environmental cues or anything that might stimulate breeding. In the 2000s I had a thermostat for their cages but it didn't have a night-drop feature so I had to manually change the setpoint every night and every morning and also try to adjust for seasonal variation. I didn't do a very good job of that. Needless to say the breeding wasn't successful except for one year in the early 2010s when Jinx produced several eggs of which two were viable and one baby hatched but did not survive.

Now that she is in her late 20s I thought I would try her one more time using Tarzan and we'll see if there is any success. If not, I don't think I'll continue making the attempts with her.