I just love a happy ending

... even when the protagonist is a lowly varmint, literally.

As you may know, when Hamfist moved in he brought two ball pythons with him. I am delighted to have them; they're beautiful and I love to watch them. I was surprised to find that I even enjoy watching them go after the live rats we feed them (although not as much as the cats enjoy it). Must have been all that "Wild Kingdom" I watched as a kid.

However, we've all been denied that pleasure for the last 3 months or so. We believe the snakes have been in hibernation mode - at least that's the only reason we could come up with that they refused to eat every time a rat was presented to them. To complicate matters, right before the beginning of that period Hamfist decided to change from small rats to medium ones. That went okay for a couple rounds of feeding, but the last one was too big: The male snake was able to kill his with no trouble, but couldn't swallow it. The female, on the other hand, didn't even strike at her rat. What to do??

We decided to just let them wait a couple weeks, then try again to see whether they wanted to eat. So we put the remaining rat in the cat carrier in the shed, with some cedar chips to nest in, and dishes of food and water. And there he remained for the next 3 months. Except for the torture sessions every two weeks or so, when we'd bring him in, put him in one snake's tank for an hour or two, then move him to the other's for a while. The snakes never showed one bit of interest, so back he'd go to his improvised cage for another fortnight.

Now, Hamfist and I are both confirmed animal lovers. While we have no qualms about providing live food for our pet snakes - after all, if they were to meet up in the wild on their own, we all know how that would go - both our consciences were increasingly troubled about the poor rattus. A quick, merciful death as part of the food chain is one thing, but this was starting to feel a little concentration-campy, and neither of us was comfortable with being responsible for that. We talked a lot about the possibility of just making him a permanent member of the household. I'd wanted a pet rat since I was a teenager, when my mother would have none of that idea, but I wanted a rat I could really treat as a pet, let it out of its cage to play with and cuddle. Now that the household is run by three cats, though, it would have to be caged almost all the time, and I 1) just plain don't want to keep a caged pet, and 2) didn't think that a life of constant fear in a cage, surrounded by vigilant, lip-smacking predators sounded like much of a deal for the poor guy either... nor even much of an improvement.

So, Hamfist finally got around to putting an ad on Craigslist to find him a proper home. As I expected, it only took a couple of days; there were quite a few people interested in saving the poor guy once they heard his story! In making the arrangements for transfer, we found out that his new person already had him named before she even got him: "Monty", for Monty Python, in honor of all he'd been through. Hamfist reports that she already has two other rats, and that she picked him up in a Mercedes(!), so we feel confident that he's going to have a much better life than we could have given him. Further, he intends to keep in touch with her. I'm hoping we'll at least get to see a picture of him in his new home, clean and well-fed. The poor little bugger deserves at least that! His life expectancy is only 2-3 years, for pete's sake, and we robbed him of 3 months of it. I hope the rest of his time on earth makes up for his time as a POW, and that the other rats revere him for the survivor he is.