Three month vacation!!! Whoo hoo!!!

[Russell]

Well, three and a half hours of work and now all the adults are in hibernation. Including some males I have no intention of using this next season, but they are adults and so why keep them topside? I put all my adults for hibernation down into the crawlspace of my home. It's essentially a spot dug out under the house into the dirt, so there are nothing but dirt walls and a dirt floor. There is a sump pump down into the dirt floor and this year it was rather WET down there. I've heard the sump pump go off a few times today yet. So we are indeed having a wet fall and normally by this time of year it's dry down there. It's always wet on the lower parts of the floor during the summer. But usually by early winter it's all dried up.

So I went down there and found the stacks of lids and some rubbermaids and brought them up. Lined the cages with double the usual layers of newspaper, put in a clean water bowl and stacked them just outside the furnace room door. Then as I got a big stack ready in the dining room here, I slid the stack over to the doorway, and then got my boots on, and took cages down there. Set em up level where I wanted them. Filled up the water bowl, and closed the lid! Now except for watering every now and then they'll pretty much be left alone for three months.

So now I've only got the young stock up here to play with. Chores will be drastically reduced each week in the snake cleaning department. Too bad I couldn't truly do that to the rodents! Although I need to go through my freezer and toss out the older rodents. I've got WAY too many frozen rodents! I have someone in mind to get rid of the rodents to. I know he'd appreciate it! Then I suppose I can quit letting the rats breed for a few months. But you can't really do that with mice although I did just reset a bunch of trays so those weanlings need to grow for a month or so, and then they will start breeding. So I'll probably give the old breeder mice the evil eye and oust them all and start the mouse trays all over again. Every one of them. But I still need food for the young snakes... *sigh*

Oh well, I look forward to spring and I've got around 20 pairings planned for 2009. I thought I had my pairings list done the other day, but then I made yet another change. *sigh*

For now, I shall enjoy the more relaxing time I have for these three months!