Suffering the Corn Snake

It's an odd title for an article about reptiles, isn't it?

Are we making the corn snake suffer something?

Is the corn snake itself suffering?

Let me tell you a story...

Oh no...

It was supposed to be a standard consultation in Dudley.

Penny and I were running a little later than expected, thanks to a particularly tricky bearded dragon and a previous job more than an hour away. We'd sent an email explaining the delay and assuring our corn snake customer that we'd be with him as soon as possible.

So there we were, fighting our way through traffic. Penny was navigating, attempting to shave precious minutes off the journey, while I followed the satnav until she suddenly announced, "LEFT!" or "Take this way, it'll save us five minutes!"

By hook or by crook, we were getting there.

In the meantime, more than a dozen emails had arrived from our customer. Obviously, we hadn't read a single one. We were driving.

In hindsight, that should have been the first red flag.

This was going to be a fun one.

We were greeted at the door by a wonderfully friendly woman who asked whether we'd come to help with the snake. Full of smiles and apologies for our tardiness, we stepped inside and asked to be shown the vivarium.

We were expecting to demonstrate some confident handling techniques, assess the enclosure and offer practical husbandry advice.

Instead, she politely asked us to go upstairs to meet our customer.

This was the next red flag.

Penny and I exchanged one of those silent conversations that couples everywhere seem to master.

Me: Huh?

Penny: No idea.

And upstairs we went.

We were greeted by a gentleman who, within approximately ten seconds, had managed to establish that this was unlikely to be a particularly relaxing consultation. He was loud, confrontational and clearly unhappy about something.

The final red flag was now waving enthusiastically.

Getting up to speed

I will freely admit that I am not the most socially accommodating person when confronted with rudeness or aggression. I have a tendency to speak my mind, occasionally before considering whether speaking my mind is a particularly sensible idea.

Thankfully, Penny is considerably more diplomatic.

As long as everyone remains respectful towards her, I can generally keep my mouth shut and concentrate on the job.

And there was certainly a job to do.

Our customer had purchased an adult corn snake, together with its complete setup, approximately nine months earlier for £250.

The enclosure was a wooden vivarium measuring 36 × 18 × 18 inches. Heating was provided by a heat mat positioned underneath the enclosure, on the outside of a wooden base approximately an inch thick.

There was no thermostat. No overhead heating. No lighting.

And very little prospect of that heat mat providing a useful thermal gradient through such a substantial insulating barrier.

Inside, things weren't much better.

What appeared to be rodent bedding covered the floor. There was a single cork bark hide and a water bowl.

Décor was done!

No meaningful climbing opportunities, very little cover, limited environmental variation and precious few opportunities for the snake to do anything particularly interesting.

I attempted not to lose my shit completely.

Composure was important.

While I examined the enclosure and tried to establish what could be improved, Penny was receiving a detailed explanation of just how much our customer knew about corn snakes.

Apparently, they were dangerous. They bit without reason. They were naturally aggressive because aggression was the only way they survived in their native Africa.

Africa.

Corn snakes.

Pantherophis guttatus.

A North American species.

I decided that correcting every misunderstanding individually might require us to extend the consultation into the following week.

The next job

We eventually finished our assessment and produced a shopping list.

And what a shopping list it was.

A larger enclosure. Suitable overhead heating. UVB lighting. Appropriate environmental monitoring.

And a goddamn thermostat.

Penny explained the recommendations to our customer and the people assisting him downstairs, while I went looking for something we could do immediately to improve the snake's surroundings.

The garden offered a few possibilities.

Some suitable dry logs, leaf litter, grasses, an old plant pot and a couple of decent-sized rocks provided opportunities for additional cover, texture variation, exploration and digging. Nothing extravagant, but a considerable improvement on a largely empty wooden box.

Naturally, anything brought in from outdoors needs checking and appropriate preparation before going into an enclosure. The point wasn't that enrichment had to be expensive. It was that the snake needed more than a hide and a water bowl.

When I returned, Penny was discussing feeding.

The snake had been receiving one medium mouse approximately every four weeks. Without a proper assessment of body condition and feeding history, that information alone wasn't enough to establish whether the diet was appropriate. More importantly, the inadequate heating arrangement raised concerns about the temperatures available for normal digestion and activity.

We explained the improvements we felt were necessary and left our recommendations with the customer.

Job done.

Observations made, advice given, shopping list supplied.

Off we went on our forty-five-minute journey home.

That, ordinarily, would have been the end of the story.

It wasn't.

The very next day

There was an email waiting for me when I got up.

I bravely decided that a coffee and cigarette were required before my brain could reasonably be expected to function.

By the time I'd returned from my five minutes of peace, there were two emails.

Twenty minutes later, three.

I bit the bullet and opened my inbox.

Just as a fourth email pinged into virtual existence.

I won't reproduce the correspondence, but I'll give you the general idea.

Had we bought the equipment yet?

Why hadn't he received confirmation that his new enclosure was being delivered?

Why hadn't we replied to his emails?

When were we coming to build everything?

It appeared that somewhere between leaving the consultation and arriving home, Penny and I had been promoted from reptile husbandry consultants to personal shoppers, delivery drivers and enclosure installers.

Nobody had thought to tell us.

Better still, we weren't apparently going to receive any additional payment for these exciting new responsibilities. We'd be reimbursed for whatever equipment we purchased, and delivery charges might be negotiable, provided we could produce evidence of delivery.

I was slightly taken aback.

There may have been some initial anger.

There was almost certainly a lot of swearing.

Thankfully, Penny intervened before the rage-coloured email forming in my head could find its way onto a computer screen.

We replied politely.

We explained that the consultation covered assessment and husbandry advice, not purchasing equipment, arranging deliveries or building enclosures. Those services had not been agreed. Those services we don't offer!

We supplied the shopping list again and even recommended online retailers from which the equipment could be ordered directly.

We considered the matter settled.

And we left it at that.

THE CUSTOMER DID NOT.

On and on and on

The emails continued.

Those relentless little electronic pings that simultaneously make modern life so convenient and so utterly infuriating.

Some days there were two. Other days, seven.

And they were an absolute joy to read.

Occasionally, an email contained nothing more than a full stop.

Sometimes the same message arrived repeatedly, apparently experimenting with different fonts.

Other messages questioned the enclosure measurements we'd recommended, accused us of withholding equipment that had supposedly already been paid for, or demanded to know when we would be delivering and installing everything.

We explained our position again.

And again.

Penny answered some messages. I answered others. A few went unanswered because there are only so many ways to explain that a consultation is not a lifetime subscription to free labour.

And because I was increasingly concerned that my next reply might contain considerably more Anglo-Saxon vocabulary than professional correspondence generally requires.

Eventually, the discussion returned to the animal itself.

I suggested that if our customer was unable or unwilling to provide the necessary care, perhaps rehoming the corn snake would be the most responsible option.

Amazingly, he agreed.

There was, however, one small condition.

I was to pay him £250 for the privilege.

I don't bloody think so, mate!

The final straw

The correspondence continued for another few weeks.

The asking price gradually decreased, while I continued to explain that he could make the recommended improvements and, if he still wished to rehome the snake, seek an appropriate new keeper.

But he was insistent.

Penny and I were to take the animal.

Nobody else.

We repeatedly explained that PRO Herpetology takes in rescue animals when we have the capacity, but we do not purchase animals as part of that work.

Eventually, after approximately three weeks of negotiations that I never participated in, he agreed to surrender the snake without payment.

The whole lot.

Snake, enclosure and all.

Great.

Penny immediately saw an opportunity to get the poor animal somewhere better.

I saw an opportunity to spend another afternoon dealing with a situation I would very much have preferred to avoid.

But the decision was made.

Off we went to Dudley.

Again.

Smash and grab

We arrived, secured the snake in a suitable transport bag, loaded the enclosure into the car...

And then the world exploded.

I won't go into the details. That is not entirely my story to tell, and there are aspects of what happened that deserve to remain private.

Suffice to say, the collection became considerably more confrontational than either of us had anticipated. My priorities were keeping Penny safe, maintaining our professional boundaries and getting the animal away without making an already difficult situation worse.

No bones were broken.

Nothing was thrown, apart from words.

And apparently, according to Penny, I've developed a rather convincing ability to look quietly intimidating.

Who knew?

But the important part of the story wasn't the confrontation.

It was the corn snake.

Safe.

Tucked up in a nice, comfortable bag, entirely unconcerned with the human drama unfolding around him.

Penny and I had achieved what we'd gone there to do.

We left with the animal and his enclosure.

Another corn snake.

Yay.

Home sweet home

Once we got him home, we finally had the opportunity to appreciate the animal at the centre of this increasingly ridiculous adventure.

And what a beautiful boy he was.

A lovely wild-type colouration, rich saddles running down his back and that wonderfully patterned belly characteristic of corn snakes.

He was a real looker.

Slightly underweight, but active, inquisitive and keen to investigate his surroundings.

Penny was immediately taken with him.

And, if I'm being entirely honest, so was I.

We established him in quarantine, ironically using his original enclosure temporarily, although this time with appropriate heating and environmental controls, multiple hides, additional cover and opportunities to climb, explore and dig.

Over the following weeks, he settled in and fed readily. We offered appropriately sized prey, including mice, rats and chicks, and monitored his condition as he adjusted to his new surroundings.

And somewhere along the way, we decided he needed a name.

After everything we'd been through to get him home, there was really only one possibility.

Suffering.

Or Suffs, for short.

It seemed rather fitting.

Today, Suffs has a suitably sized, properly equipped enclosure and opportunities to behave like the animal he is. He can climb, investigate, conceal himself, dig and generally get up to the sort of hilariously terrible mischief that makes corn snakes such entertaining animals to observe.

He is no longer simply an animal being kept alive in a box. His environment provides choices, and those choices allow us to see much more of what makes him a corn snake.

That, to me, is what good husbandry should aim for.

Not merely survival.

The opportunity to live.

And after everything that happened, I think our little rescue has earned that opportunity.

He's Suffering, but he's no longer suffering.