So, Mike and I got back from a dinner party tonight, and were staggering off towards bed when I flipped on the light, glanced into the snake cage, and saw…BABY BOAS!!!
I had no inkling that Isis was even pregnant. Except that she was resolutely refusing to eat, but I was chalking that up to her being fussy. But no…!
So either the little minx has been storing sperm for the last couple years (they’ve been known to do that), or Astarte is not as female as she purports to be…!
So anyway, I now have four happy, healthy, bouncing baby boas (it could have been eighteen; Isis laid fourteen slugs (unfertilized eggs) in addition to the four live babies), and I’m spending tomorrow morning setting up a baby-snake nursery.
Here’s a photo of two of the little bundles of joy:
a thoroughly astonished, happy snake-gramma
Tien