My Pet Python’s Shoe Fetish

When we first brought Havana home, Thomas and I gave her a few days alone in her enclosure to help her adjust to her new environment. Breeders often recommend letting snakes get used to their new home for about a week before taking them out to play with them. Since Havana’s current enclosure is actually the same tank she lived in previously, we figured she’d need a lot less time to become adjusted (considering her “new” home really wasn’t all that new to her). We watched her to make sure she was comfortable and calm, then on the third day, decided it was okay to take her out for the first time.

Havana was incredibly gentle and never once tried to bite or attack us. She’d do one of two things: either sit calmly wherever we placed her, or decide to explore by slithering around to whatever caught her eye. I sat cross-legged on the floor with her in my lap, not really holding her so that she could roam around a little.

She started gripping onto my shoe, which was fine, only I was concerned that she might get herself stuck in one of them. I took off the sandal that she was not near first, then tried taking off the one that she was wrapped around, but it was too late.

Havana had managed to completely grip herself onto my shoe. Thomas and I tried to gently coax her out, but she was having none of it. Instead of coming off the shoe, she went further in and kept looping herself through the hole. Obviously, the result was quite amusing.

I then caught hold of her and tried to drag her out the opposite way she came in. Of course that didn’t work, because when I tried pulling her backward, she merely pushed herself further in!

Finally, I decided it would be a good idea to lift the shoe in the air. I’d noticed previously that Havana doesn’t really like it when her body is above her head, so I figured she’d let herself out of the shoe if the shoe were elevated.

Luckily, this did the trick, because otherwise, I would have been clean out of ideas! My only other option would have been to drop the entire Birkenstock sandal, with her in it, in her enclosure! And who knows how long she would have taken to get herself out at that point. Maybe she would’ve used the shoe as her new hide.

Needless to say, I was glad she’d eventually come out of my sandal.  It took us about 15 minutes from start to finish to get her out. Not too bad, and definitely entertaining, but a tad stressful when you consider that we’d only just gotten her a few days before.