I have replaced my lost fish with a new pet. I got an……….



Albino Okeetee Corn Snake! My friend Mark in the ville is an amateur herpetologist and makes a few hundred to a few thousand bucks a year breeding snakes on the side (he’s a musicologist by day). Our friend Bob has been raising one of Mark’s snakes and I was so taken with this pet during my visit that I asked Mark what he might have available in something reptilian. He graciously hooked me up with a snake and a starter cage all my own.

FYI – the name Okeetee refers to the South Carolina County where the best and most collectable Corn Snakes come from. Apparently these snakes are tri-color in the wild and breeders then match them to select out one of the colors. My snake has been bred first to remove the black and then to be an amelanistic 'reverse' of an Okeetee corn – amelanistic means without melanin in the skin – otherwise known as albino. This is apparently something that snake folk really go for.

When he gets bigger he’ll look like the image in this link.



When Mary and I got back from the ville tonight I went to the pet store and got snake food (dead frozen mice called fuzzys) that can go next to the beef heart cubes for the Cichlids in our freezer. I’ve actually started feeding the Cichlids the occasional horde of guppies with their flake food. You can get twelve guppies for a dollar fifty and they keep the Cichlids from bothering the other fish in the tank. We’ve moved up the food chain here a bit at The Fortress. Ah, I haven’t told you about The Fortress.

I’ve started calling our house The Fortress as we have locks that work only with keys and so we are always locking ourselves in. Alternately people are ringing the doorbell and peeking in through the curtains while we hunt around for where we might have left the keys. The longer name for the apartment has to do with the food we served at the New Year’s Eve Party – we served what I called Pan-Asian Tex-Mex with a European Flare – so this is the Pan Asian Tex-Mex South Side Fortress. I’m not married to the name, but it is what I have been calling the place to myself. With the addition of the snake and all the new fish perhaps we should call the apartment The Menagerie.

Jes and I are vacationing separately this season – as are all the Nuevo Riche. She went to Chicago today with the girls (Beth, Kat, & Vanessa) to shop at Ikea – where broke folk can buy cool stuff without all the consumerist guilt that accompanies a Crate and Barrel purchase. The road trip to Ikea reminds me of the kids in the dorms who used to go to St. Louis and back in an evening for White Castle. These girls do a semi-annual trip to Chicago, usually they make the trip there and back in a day and sometimes they go so far as to rent a trailer to bring back their new chairs and couches. I know, this is a little scary, but it’s a thing and you know how people are about their things. I can’t fault them for liking cool stuff; aesthetics is the new identity baby.

As I understand it Jes has purchased arms for our couch. Did you know that you could buy just the arms? At Ikea all things are possible. She was also going to get some sort of shelving units for our stuff. It’s always good to buy stuff for your stuff; where else would you stuff the stuff? Groan! Ok, the sophomoric pap that I am generating here is annoying even me so I am off to watch my snake sleep. Be well.