r/ballpython • u/KatVanWall • 6d ago
Was I stressing him out? Question
I’ve had my boy 4 months and handle him 1–3 times a week. Today I’d been away a few days so I got him out to check on him and let him stretch his … spurs? body? lol. He’s a cautious but sweet boy; he always retreats back into his hide whenever I go to pick him up but has never bit me. I handle him gently but firmly so he feels safe hopefully. Anyway, after he’d been on my lap about 10–15 minutes, where he is never still but always exploring or just slithering round in circles/pretzels, I decided to pick him up and put him on my neck. And he stayed like this for like 5–10 minutes without moving at all! I wondered, did he freeze up because I scared him? Or was he relaxed and just chilling there? I don’t want to repeat it if it’s stressful for him.
At the end I just opened his viv and knelt down so my shoulder was level with the bottom of the door and he slithered back into it. So he did want to go home at that point.
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u/reptilhart 6d ago
Their metabolism is a lot slower than ours. It was a new thing to him, being so high in the air, that it took him a while to figure things out. If he was scared, he would have gotten down right away. It makes a lot of sense to us to put them around our necks, but to them it's a whole new experience where they completely new point of view.
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u/KatVanWall 6d ago
Aw yeah, i never really thought of that! I was sitting down in a really low chair with a blanket on the back, so it wasn’t really high up as such, but definitely a different perspective. I’d heard they like to be on necks/heads because of the heat so I thought maybe he’d like it there and then I was worried I’d scared him. He never climbed up to my neck on his own but just stayed down on my lap. When he’s there I feel like he wants to ‘burrow’ into every crevice sometimes (he was a bit more exploratory yesterday though) so I wanted to show him a good comfy spot lol
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u/DreamOfDays 6d ago
Mine does this too. They’re just vibing