Boyd the Burmese Python

Gender: Presumed female.
Age: Unknown. Possibly not much over a year.
Length: 8'
Weight: Unknown, but not light....
Temperment: Very nice, considering....
Reason for Former Status: Dead, sometime in November of 2001.

Boyd was my second snake, and my second rescue.

At the time, I was still in the military. On my way out, but still in. I was going to a 'Transition' group session -- to get me ready to be a 'civillian' again, since, y'know, I forgot -- and one of the people there told me her company commander had recently confiscated all of her animals, because you can only have two pets, and if you have two fish....

Among the animals taken were two Ball pythons and a Burmese. The two Ball Pythons disappeared. The Burmese was being kept in a 55gallon aquarium with a screen top, a tiny bowl of water, and a heatrock. No place to hide. Not even enough room to move. And it was in a room that regularly had 300 or so people in it, according to what I've heard.

Not the best situation for it.

Which is why I broke the rules and got the thing.

By the time I was able to get it, the thing had managed to rub away most of its nose. I didn't know snakes could breathe through their mouths...this one had to, though.

I treated her as well as I could on my own; there were no vets in that area of New York who would work with reptiles.

I somehow managed to hide eight feet of snake for the next few weeks while I was outprocessing, and took her back home with me to PA in a gym bag. It was December, so when we stopped at a restaurant for dinner I took the bag inside with me. That was fun -- sitting in a Country Kitchen, or whatever it was, with a bag that occasionally moved.

After getting her home, I realised that I wasn't going to be able to keep her, and have her be happy. My parents didn't like her [yes, I went back to my parents' place], and there just wasn't enough room in that house for her. So I ended up giving her to the son of one of my mom's acquaintances, who happened to be something of a herpetological hobbyist.

She died in 2001 of complications from the stress, illnesses and injuries she ended up with before I got her.