u/StoryBard

Friend is a girl!!! I've had her since she was a tiny lil babby and I've waited a couple years to be able to figure this out.

You can see how absolutely "delighted" she was to get turned upright for a pic of her tail region so I could confirm. She "smiled" toward my fingies with all her might. XD

Bonus cute pic of her like a precious, stinky little burger (she also musked because of course she did).

She enjoys being talked to and fed but she does NOT want to be handled, particularly if it's not in a normal, upright position. Sorry kid, every once in a while I gotta to care for your tiny life. You'll survive, lol.

a sneak snake peek lol

I'm trying to build trust without scaring him but to be fair he is much, much smaller than I am so getting him accustomed to my face/voice/hands will likely take a lil while...

I mean, not really... probably. He's just kinda a goober.

The breeder said to keep his setup very simple at first, which I did, a hide on a cool side and another on the warm side as instructed. Now that he's slammed back a pinkie a week for me twice I decided it was time to upgrade him. He never used the hides, for some reason. I saw him put his head into the low one and immediately nope out, and the other one he'd hide between it and the wall in full view of any and everything. My partner said "maybe he doesn't like something over his head" and to test this possibility I put some dark paper over the corner he'd been hiding in to offer a shielded spot just without a ceiling.... he slept crammed in the other corner, behind the water dish.

So last night I bought a few new goodies (I probably could have raided my stash of various creature and terrarium accoutrements but I thought he deserved something new of his own) and to that end I got a new piece of driftwood and a little fake tree meant ostensibly for aquarium decor. I mean, it is, just, without water in it. I thought he'd enjoy climbing it since his second favorite sport is the corner wall shimmy (first favorite is splashies). I took him out and set him in his upturned lid while I redecorated and rearranged his setup, ecstatic at how much better the result was. Well, I thought so anyway.

Hisstachio did not agree. The new stuff? Sus. The old stuff? All wrong. I'm not going under the brick hide, it dark in there! Still refuse to go in the low tree trunk hide. Will climb onto the driftwood sort of but prefers to avoid that corner entirely, and forget touching that tree, that thing's gonna eat me! He spent the next ten minutes pacing along the front of the tank. I left him there to figure it out. Note where I found him this morning (he's not stuck, I checked).

I think Stache needs a night light.

Might try dirt substrate so I can make it deeper, I just got this stuff because the breeder recommended it but the pet shop sells it in these ridiculously tiny bags and I feel like there's gotta be a more cost effective, diggable substrate out there (have yet to see him dig but that snoot was made for snootin so I bet if he felt things were right for it, he'd do it).

Very excited! Let me spin you the tale of a lil fella- TL;DR at bottom because I know what you are really here for haha!

I've been all about animals since I was born as far as I can tell, and though I'm newer on the herp side of exotics (things like birds and exotic rodents and even livestock for most of my middle aged years, but herps for only about ten), I decided it was time. My geckos are amazing. My toads are precious. My turtle is the cutest little beggar that ever done swum a swim. My spiders are so pretty when they deign to grace me with their prescence. My millipedes are so neat when I inevitably dig them up after weeks just to make sure they're still okay. But my little menagerie was missing one thing: NOODLE.

I love tiny animals, so of course, I'm obsessed with little tiny snakes. Sadly, being a newb to snakes doesn't bode well for that, as few of the truly small species are readily available in the hobby on account of their tendency to, well, die randomly. I really wanted garters, because they're so active and I was excited to watch them bob for treats, but in spite of following all of the breeder's instructions, mine wouldn't eat for me and passed away. I was gutted. She said that can happen with baby garters and it wasn't my fault, but I didn't even think about a snake again for a long time. This year, I finally decided even if they're not quite as bitsy wee and won't eat fish and worms, a male hognose is still quite modest in size and desperately cute with its lil shovel snoot, and more importantly are considered quite hardy and good eaters even if you are as n00b as me.

On morph market, even after you narrow the search to males and like, within my budget, there are roughly 14 quintillion pages of available adorable Chonky Shoestrings(TM) to choose from. But I kept coming back to this one little dude. I kinda wanted an axanthic. I love all of the gray morphs, just a big fan of cool colors in general and they're so neat lookin. But this one lil arctic toffee belly just kept kind of grabbing my attention. After a few days of looking at lots of snakes, and thinking, I would find myself back on his page every time I sifted through my shortlist. Had to be this guy!

Best choice ever! The breeder was lovely and helpful and my new snake is (I say without any bias of course) a perfect creature. His headstamp has a perfect little handlebar mustache on it. So naturally I named him Hisstachio. Hisstachio P Noodlemeyer. The P is for Pissy, as he lives up to the dramatic reputation of his kind already, and I was a fan of Pissy the hognose on Exotics Lair. With a name as long as he is, obviously I don't use the full thing most of the time, so I call him Hisstachio, Stache, or just chicken noodle because of his strong opinions about basically everything that exists.

I followed everything the breeder said and started very simple on the enclosure, ten gallon, heat on one side, some hides, without a ton of enrichment just to start, aspen shreddies. Sure enough, he seems quite comfy in there and when it was feeding day, though he didn't want to take it from tongs, he was happy to engulf his pinkie without much fuss. We're two pinkies in so I've started to handle him in short sessions, yay!

Thing I didn't know about these guys: they like to play in the water!!! Aaah like a lil garter! Stache splashes, and sits in there, and climbs around the edge of the dish like he's playing "don't touch" and then he falls in anyway, and it's very, very cute to watch. He also ignores climbing his sticks or the little bricks I built a makeshift structure with and instead likes to do the corner shimmy up the wall until he falls over. He huffs and mock-strikes at basically anything he sees. He is very suspicious. When I picked him up he sassed at his shadow on the wall. As you can tell he is very, very smart. Probably the smarterest that a baby hog has ever been, practically a prodigy, sending him to snek college tomorrow for advanced classes.

TL:DR LOOK AT MY CUTE SNEK, I NEVER A SNEK BEFORE, GET HYPE WITH ME