Halls of the Dark Muse

Though Loki is quite the sweetheart, and he exhibits no aggressive behaviors, or defense mechanisms and is very docile, it seems he has not been accustomed to being handled very much in his past life. He will let you pick him up without giving any sort of trouble, but when you are holding him he has a tendency to be skittish and will spend the entire time trying to escape and try to dart off and get away.

For anyone who has not experienced it, snakes can be quite difficult to keep hold of, they are very squirmy, and they can slip right out of your hands, there is no really way to actually keep a grip upon them. So what I have to do in order to keep him in control and prevent his escape, is when I pick him up the first thing I do is get his tail wrapped around my wrist. With his tale secured it makes it easier to redirect and guide the rest of his movements, so I can sort of steer his head with my hands which will prevent him from being able to just take off.

Quite by chance with my previous snake Ring I discovered a technique which I have found effective in helping to calm the snake down and get her to be still at least for a short period of time. Now I do not know if there is any sort of scientific basis behind this, or if anyone else has ever done it or if it will always work, I just know that when I would do it, it proved to be effective.

I decided to try this with Loki, the first couple of days he was too skittish for me to really attempt it, because as soon as I would try to touch him he would dart his head away from me, but he has been starting to get a little better. So I was holding him tonight, when I thought I would give it a try again, and once more it seemed to work quite well and I would be able to get him to hold still at intervals for short periods of time.

Basically all I do is stroke the underside of his head with my finger, and he still suddenly hold still and stop moving around.