I recently acquired a 5ft LTC Ptyas mucosa. I have always been drawn to the Ptyas genus. Their big fierce looking eyes, eye-catching pattern, and impressive colors have always interested me. Its no secret that I’m a Morelia guy at heart but I have always had an interest in old world rat snakes as well. I use to frequent the now shut down ratsnake foundation and learned about tons of species that we don’t see in the mainstream hobby. So this particular individual Ptyas I have is shy, nervous, and defensive. Just something that the species is sometimes known for. So no surprises once I received her. I have her in a 5ft PVC cage with a jungle of cork bark and cork tubes. Even with her cage being outfitted with that much cover, she is still very nervous and defensive when I have to do cage maintenance. When I see an animal acting like that, striking repeatedly if I just looked into the cage. I perceive this behavior as stress on the animal. I am completely fine with an animal not being “docile” if that means that particular animal is stressed out less often. This caused me to brainstorm on a possible solution to how I can work with the animal with causing the least amount of stress on her and me during cage maintenance.

So my first idea was to look into the hide boxes that people use for venomous snakes. These are usually boxes with sliding doors so you can secure the snake in the hide box. I wanted something that was along those lines. As fate would have it, I came across a video on YouTube from Brandon Wheeler of Morelia House showing what he uses for his scrub python. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk4O3Bx_ulE at the 1:00 mark you can see what I saw that got my wheels turning.

I ended up going straight to Home Depot and got all of the supplies I would need. I got two 4 gallon Rubbermaid tote with a latching lid, 3 inch threaded female PVC couplings, 3 inch threaded male PVC caps, and silicone to seal the coupling in place.

Here are all the supplies I needed to complete this project.

I happened to have the right size drill attachment to make the right sized hole for the 3 inch coupling.

Here are the finished products, one with the cap on and one without after sealing the edges with silicone.

So here is the finished product. What I can do is go into that Ptyas cage and thread the cap on, remove the whole hide box and reduce the stress that she experiences so I can do cage maintenance with no issues. I have New Zealand Sphagnum Moss in there so it acts as a humid hide. She honestly spends most of her time in there so it makes life a lot easier for both of us. She is eating quicker than before so all around it seems to be a good move. The second one was for a lay box for one of my bigger coastal carpet females that was a little big for my usual egg boxes.

This is an easy and cheap way to make a secure hide box for any snake or reptile that might be on the more nervous side. Its not ground-breaking but it is functional and I have had a lot of success with it so far. Whenever you are scrolling through social media or watching videos on YouTube, keep an open mind. You never know what might trigger an idea that you can use for your collection.