16 Lasers

2016

I've always wanted to keep gray-banded kingsnakes and have been especially interested in the Blairs phase snakes that have the wide orange bands around them. In the early 2000s my wife and I visited the home of Ric Blair where we saw maybe 200 or so of them in his collection. Ric said at the time that he had a compulsive desire to buy them up any time he saw them for sale. I completely understand.

While I have always wanted to own them I'm not that interested in breeding them. Primarily because I've heard it is such a pain to get babies to eat and I don't have the patience for difficult eaters. But I bought a male gray-band in 2016 and we've loved him. My 7-yo at the time named him "16 Lasers" because he has 16 orange bands around his body.

I don't know if this is a genetic problem or not but within 4 or 5 years after buying him, 16 Lasers had developed a noticeable lump in the part of his body just before the cloaca. I'm guessing this is some sort of tumor maybe? I took him to our exotic animal vet and their response was they didn't know what it could be. So we have continued to care for him and I'm hoping he's not in any pain. He eats great and defecates just fine so I don't know what kind of harm this is doing to him, but I am expecting that this will impact his lifespan.