Yesterday, I (along with happicow and Andrea) met a new friend. 
Meet Nyx. S/hes a baby corn snake, hatched on May 21 in a clutch engineered by my friend Victoria (the remainder of which is currently on display at the Sciencenter). The babies havn’t been sexed yet, so I tried to pick a suitably pretty yet androgynous name- and ‘Nyx’ was the one I liked the best. The first site I saw it on said it simply meant “of the night”, but upon further inspection I found out that Nyx was the greek goddess of the night, whom even mighty Zeus feared. Goddesses aside, I still thought it was pleasantly simple, yet also pretty and punful (nix, *nix, etc.).
Nyx is already pretty tame, but I supposed that would be expected as he’s been pretty much handled (at least, he’s been surrounded by small noisy humans) since birth. Apparently he’s also been eating frozen pinkies since birth, so I shouldn’t have any trouble on that front (though I suppose I won’t find out myself until tomorrow).
Also, he’s super-cute and tiny and longer than one would expect given how tiny he seems. When I was picking him out yesterday, I got the chance to hold a mass of a dozen ~10-12 inch baby corn snakes in my palm. It was quite possibly one of the cutest things I have ever seen, and definitely one of the most interesting things I have ever felt.
I’ve been told that rats will always be too big for hm to eat- here’s hoping! Anyway, even if they aren’t too big, I can still feed him a few mice at a time instead, I suppose. I just can’t come to terms with the idea of keeping rats as a pet (which won’t be changing anytime soon!) yet feeding rats to another pet. Mice I don’t care about as much, as I’ve never kept pet mice before.