New addition

We had a pretty busy weekend. Well, it wasn't really busy, but my daughter got her much-coveted snake this weekend, so it made it seem like it had been busy. She got a corn snake which looks like this:



It's just a baby right now, only about a month old. This isn't a picture of my daughter's snake, just one like it. Apparently, according to my husband anyway, they grow to be four to five feet long. And will look like this as an adult:



Guh, what the fuck? That's like a snake snake. That's what that little thing is going to end up looking like? Oh my lord. What in God's name have I let them bring into this house? Seriously, it's like that worm thing is going to be a snake when it grows up. It's fine now because it's cute, but what the freak am I going to do when that starts looking like the star of Anaconda 2? I think I'm hyperventilating right now. There's going to be a fucking human-sized SNAKE in my house. It's not venomous or anything, what I don't think I was really thinking it would look like an actual snake when it grew up because it looks like a little rubber toy now. Anyway, let me shelve my heebie-jeebies long enough to tell you that my daughter, in all her naming creativity, named the snake Corny. This is her usual method of naming animals: Let me just stick a "y" at the end of whatever animal it is and that's its name. I told her to name it Nagini, like from Harry Potter and she said, "No! That's evil."

For a second, I thought she might name it Maize after I suggested that, but no. That was not meant to be, either. Then I said she should name it Candy or Pop or Buttered, and she was like, "Those are dumb names." Oh, yeah, she also decided Corny's nickname would be Snakey. See, what did I tell you?

Anyway, this thing eats mice--"pinkies" to be exact. Pinkies are newborn, blind and hairless mice. The snake can't handle anything bigger than that. It needs to be fed once a week, so my daughter and husband plan on making Saturdays their go-to-the-petshop-and-buy-a-pinkie day. My daughter's pretty excited for this Saturday because it'll be the first time she gets to watch Corny feed. I have to say she handles Corny with a good deal of confidence, which isn't incredibly surprising for me but it's still a little funny to watch. If I had a digital video camera, I could film Corny devouring its prey and post it for you, but I don't so I can't. Actually, I'm wondering what's going to happen when Corny gets bigger. I'm wondering if the rabbit will sense it and if Corny's presence will freak it out or anything. I know cats and dogs raised together end up as friends, but what about the rabbits and snakes of the world?