Me and My Serpents
Since I was a little kid, I always close to nature. It's because I was born in the family who once was a farmer. My mother has capable to kept a farm of chickens, while my father was once have ever live from the jungle, sold firewood to make money for his school fees.
Even though I wasn't as struggled as them at the very young age, at least their passion towards nature would have been like already passes down to me. But there's something unique from what I've been encounter lately these days. Since I'm very close to tame animals, such as birds family, ungulates, and cats (and sometimes dogs), I have special relationship too with wild animals, specifically, snakes.
Yes, only God who knows exactly how I ended up to be so much bonding with these slithering predators. It all began while I was first time visiting the Ragunan Zoo in Jakarta when I was four years old. Even though I met so many animals, and listing them one by one, there's only one animal that I brave enough to interact with, and it was surprisingly, an eight-meter-long reticulated python, which was the biggest snake in Ragunan Zoo at that time.
I don't know if this is felt like supernatural abilities or not, but I could potentially knew what "she" is intend to say (the snake was a female, which I guess it just right before the keeper was actually saying it to the audiences) it was like I can "communicate" with them. I don't know exactly to express it, but I somehow "heard" she said "Don't worry, I'm full, I won't eat you, my body is already too heavy to move, and I know you have something". That was my first time I understand that I have special bonding with snakes
Even though I was so close to them and have special bonding, my parents are trying to limit me with them, especially when I was too young to handle snakes. I was never kept snakes as a pet, as my parents said "they have the right to be free in the wild" which is very true. That's why, even though I can interact well with them, I never kept a wild individuals in my enclosures.
It is until I find out one of my childhood idol, Panji, made a content in youtube about how can we snake lovers, or the one who want to try to kept snake as pets, have been given a more flexible platform from local snake breeder, so that we can own a captive breed snakes, which is more easier to handle (because the individuals hatched from eggs in captivity and raised in captivity) and have softer characters than the wild one. At that time, I felt like my confidence to own one of them is getting back again.
I began to did a small survey about several online seller who sold reptile animals. And I also did a small research about every species I found in there, are they venomous or not, what they can eat and when we can set the eating schedules, what they need in their enclosures so that they feel comfortable, and many more.
Long story short, I chosen my first snake pet, and I named it Lufi (I actually want to name her "Roofy", but I want to spell it even easier). It is one of the species of Wolf Snake, it is a non venomous snake, is a female, and her diet is lizards (yes, the one which we can easily find running through our walls or sometimes hiding next to the rice cooker).
I can bond with Lufi very well, she's very playful at the beginning, but become calmer months later. She grow out quick (in a year, she gained 10 cm) and she shed on time. My first year to keeping snake as pets is quite easy. Lufi eats once a week, with only one big lizard is enough to make her full.Â
Now Lufi has reached its maximum size of 70 cm. I sense I stepping up to have better experience about how to handle snakes carefully without harming both myself and the snake. Even now, I think I will add more snake pets. One of my next target is Malayan Ringneck Snake, or locally called "broomstick snake" which its diet consist of only insects like crickets, grasshopers, and larvae. I think I will start to becoming snake handler expert in no time.
