This and That

Here I am again. I’m still sporadic. Days fly for me. There isn’t a good time to sit and do this writing. I can’t recall if I wrote this in here but – at the end of July I found I lost my renter. It started with an HOA warning letter about the stupid screen door being ajar or off the tracks (turned out to not be anything! I thought it was all bent or something. Stupid picky HOA!) So D. my realtor/manager called the tenant and found out she had been in the hospital for a few weeks. She got her gallbladder out but then they discovered that she had something else. Now she is going home to her parents’ to recover. They (her father who was paying and her) gave the required 30 day notice and paid for Aug. They have now moved out and cleaned the place! That was nice of them. I’m praying for her just about every time I think of her. One of my old Condo neighbors “A” called me and had noticed the place was empty and wondered if I was going to re-rent it as she had someone who would like to. Well I called back and left a message saying they had until the end of the month and outlining what I would require to rent. Plus I want to try to sell it. She didn’t return my call. I tried again yesterday after I received more info from my realtor. Still have not heard back. To change the subject – Sahara, my spider morph ball python, was sold to me last year as a male, but has sense been sexed by just about everyone as female. One guy insisted on male because of the “spurs” but apparently that is not reliable on ball pythons. “He/She” was sexed female twice by my vet (probe) twice by someone at S+T (popping) and by both popping and probing by two people at an event from the mile high bug club. So I’m going with female though I’m still uncertain. - Side note for people who don’t know – popping is normally done on younger animals and involves gently squeezing certain areas to get the hidden “male organs” to pop out. If nothing happens, female. If you see something, male. Probing means sticking a special small well.. probe – in that area – being careful not to damage the snake of course, how far in the probe goes is what decides male or female. Supposedly the further it goes (need more room for the “junk”?) the more likelihood the snake is male. The probe went in only 3 or 4 scales – so they said female. Because of this I decided to go ahead and get the other color snake I wanted a chocolate morph. In this morph the darkest area of the dark brown is extended so you get thicker bands. Also in some cases the lighter brown and the yellow areas are darkened into a med brown and light yellow-brown. So I contacted someone “R” on a recommendation from someone at S+T. He did have a chocolate male left but he (the snake) wasn’t as obvious as some the breeder had in the past. His clutch mate also may be chocolate – but the breeder is even less sure. After some back and forth the breeder offered 200 for BOTH. I wasn’t expecting that. As a chocolate goes for 150-200 I thought ok. But I wanted ot make sure the first one was guaranteed. He was a bit hesitant to actually guarantee the color so he dropped the price to 150 instead. So I either got a great deal or got bleeped depending on if the main one really is a chocolate. Because normal balls go for 25-40 as babies. So if they are both normal they are worth at the most 80. However, after seeing the snakes the darker one is either chocolate or very close. I suspect there is more then one gene at play here. People just breed the off colors or patterns in hope to “prove” a morph… no one really knows what makes up these colors or what the genes are doing! And I doubt the scientific community carries as much as they do for cat colors/breeds. Oh well. Either way they are mine now and settled in. I’ll see if I can attach a picture here. (Note, I will most likely move or delete this picture in the future so if you are reading this months or years from now the picture may no longer exist.)