This weekend I bought a snake at chattuchak market.  You few religous readers may remember that Chattuchak is the world's largest single outdoor market and that is is amazingly crowded and crazy.  We went on Saturday afternoon.  THe sky was clear which meant the sun was overpowering.  ANd I had come straight from my Saturday lessons so I was wearing long black slacks and a polo shirt.  Needless to say I was pretty gross by the time we got out of there, but that's all beside the point. 

I had been wanting to buy a snake for a while and I have been reading a lot about various snakes this week to find which one would be good for me.  I had been to the market the previous weekend to peruse the selection.  The dealers that I found were all obviously just kind of low class Thai dudes that go out in the forest and catch snakes and sell them.  They had a cobra, a couple of Burmese Pythons(which can grow to 30 feet), reticulated pythons(which is the largest recorded snake in the world), and some other various venemous snakes.  None of which they actualy knew the english name for(I looked up the Thai name and English) and all of which they were willing to sell to any poor idiot willing to buy it.  Anyway, I was disconcerted about this because I've heard that snakes caught in the wild are more likely to die in captivity and obviously more likely to bite.  So I went back excited but not entirely hopeful about getting a good snake.  I was looking at one of the stalls I had been to the previous weekend.  They had tarantulas, scorpions (which were just in an open plastic tub), a few huge snapping turtles (which were in the same types of tubs with no room to move but with a wire mesh on the top), and a bunch of snakes in aquariums.  Then I saw that there was another store a few stalls down that had a nicer looking store and animals in more suitable cages.  I went inside and they were more knowledgable friendly and helpful.  I ended up buying a corn snake which you can get in the US anyway.  Actually the one I bought was even bred in captivity in the US and shipped here.  But they are very docile and handle-able and hardy animals.  I have to feed it a baby mouse about once a week, and I've got it in my bathroom since the air-conditioning doesn't really reach in there.  And luckily since this is Thailand I don't really need a heating element because my bathroom is pretty constantly about 80-85 and humid.  Pretty sweet.  And the dude at the store said that corn snakes are not a controlled animal so it would be easy to take it across international borders. 

So, the only problem now is I need a good name for it.  Any suggestions?  There is a picture of the snake on my pictures and also a pic of it's first meal at my place.  Check em out.  Well I suppose I should get back to work now since I'm at work. 

-Devblog