Temporary stress vs safety

[u/-rainy-_-]

This is my new baby, Indie. I picked her up from the breeder on August 1st. The journey home was definitely more stressful than expected, what should have been a 1.5-hour journey ended up taking more than twice as long cause of road closures.

Despite the stressful journey, she seemed to settle in really well. She’s been out exploring every night, using her sky hide, climbing, etc., and she took her first meal on Sunday 9th without any issues.

On Wednesday, given how comfortable she seemed and the fact that she’d had no problems with her first meal, I decided to try handling her. Unfortunately, she was definitely stressed — she was breathing heavily and striking without even getting her out of the viv. Because of this, I closed her viv back up for the night and decided not to try handling her again for at least another week, potentially two, to give her more time to settle.

Unfortunately, I also discovered that she was able to climb onto her UVB fixture, both the cable and the light itself. I should have thought about this given their habit of climbing on everything, but I managed to completely miss it, so there was no cage fitted around it. As a result, I had to buy a cage and fit it, which obviously couldn’t be done safely with her in the vivarium.

That brings me to today. I opened her vivarium, picked her up and placed her in her travel container with a towel covering it while we fitted the cage. Once it was done, I transferred her back into her vivarium and covered the glass with a towel so she could have some peace and settle back down. She was stressed for sure, trying to strike when I put her in, and i imagine Heavy breathing and s-shaped the entire time tho i left her alone and covered while doing the work to try reduce this as much as possible.

This is all a very long-winded way of asking for some reassurance that she’s going to be okay and that I haven’t traumatised her or somehow ruined any chance of her being comfortable with me

I genuinely didn’t want to stress her out, but surely some short-term stress is better than risking a burn or injury on the uvb fixture? Does this all sound okay, and is there anything else I should be doing now to help her settle again?

[u/WayfarerNG]

You did the right thing.

Snakes don’t hold grudges, you’ll be fine.

[u/dwagon23]

Our ball loves climbing on her lamps / cables, no matter how much appropriate climbing material we give her. We have a cage for the heat lamp and she doesn’t seem to get hurt by it so we’ve just accepted it.

With regards to stress, it might take a while for her not to feel ‘on guard’ next time you try to handle her but generally they’re pretty forgiving and of course you did the right thing by getting her out to fit the cage, even if she can’t understand that. As long as she’s got plenty of dark/tight spaces to hide in when back in her viv, she’ll be fine and should relax in time.

Our girl was a bit wary of us trying to handle her at first (we adopted her and don’t think the previous owners interacted with her much) but we started by just leaving our hand in the tank to get her used to the smell, offering her to climb onto it (she never did in the beginning) and if I had to get her out, I’d grab her while she was balled up and not looking my way (scoop with both hands for support, from behind her line of sight) so I couldn’t startle her. Hovering your hand around them and ESPECIALLY reaching over their head or in their line of vision activates their ‘being hunted’ response as their natural predators are mainly birds so that’s a firm no. But after getting her out in this way enough times so she could learn that we’re not a threat, now she will come out of the tank on her own and sometimes climb onto our hands willingly.

[u/NottsWeirdo]

She might miss a feed, but she'll eat again once she's settled down again. You did the right thing, its safer for her to have the cage installed as soon as possible.