When I was in seventh grade we babysat a boa constrictor for 10 months. George’s owners were doctors and friends of my parents. The fellowship they were awarded meant they would be out of the country for almost a year. Rather than subject their three pets to the rigors of quarantine, they decided to leave them at home and find pet sitters. They easily found a house sitter who agreed to also care for their two cats. I like to think they asked my parents if we could care for George because my sisters and I were known for taking good care of our pets–fish, cats, dogs and a rabbit–and not because finding someone to care for their boa constrictor, George, proved impossible.
George was beautiful, so it likely wasn’t due to lack of looks that his owners had a hard time finding a sitter. His scales were slightly iridescent (something I later learned is a characteristic of a healthy boa). The pattern on his scales–a complicated repeating pattern of shades of brown, black, and white from the back of his head down almost his entire length–was lovely. He felt cool, heavy, and firm when you picked him up. His eyes were bright and clear. George was alert, his tongue flicking regularly.
He made no noise, so it couldn’t have been concern about caring for a noisy pet that deterred people. Nor was he aggressive: Most boas have placid temperaments and George never bit, even when he was hungry. When George was picked up, he fairly firmly gripped your hands or arm using his tail to steady himself before relaxing slightly when he felt safe. His owners handled him a lot, so he was agreeable to being picked up, handled, and carried around.
George’s exercise requirements were easily met, so worries about taking him out in bad weather or in the dark after work couldn’t have been a factor. He spent hours curled up in one corner or other of his enormous enclosure, hiding in one of his hollow logs or basking on rocks under the heat lamp set up in one corner or draped on a sturdy, sterilized branch that was firmly secured to prevent it from toppling over.
Keeping his enclosure clean and his water dish filled with fresh water didn’t take long, so it wasn’t due to a complicated care regimen that was giving potential pet sitters pause.
No, the fact his owners couldn’t easily find someone to care for their pet must have been due to the fact George was a boa constrictor and, at 5’4″ long, a fairly good sized one at that.
My sisters and I knew George from having visited the home of his owners, and getting him settled into our home was easy. Our mother brought him to our classrooms in school as part of show and tell, transporting him in a pillowcase she tied firmly closed. My sisters and I found that regardless of age, it was easier to persuade girls in the class to touch him than the boys.
Feeding George proved to be the one worrisome hitch until I resolved to do what was needed to get him to eat.
His owners left us a supply of dead white rats and a couple more than we needed. We stored George’s meals in our refrigerator’s freezer. When it came time to feed George his first meal, I took a rat out of the freezer and thawed it before putting it into his enclosure. George would have none of it. Reasoning this was because it wasn’t freshly killed and warm, I put the rat in the oven on a cookie sheet, turned on the oven, and carefully warmed up George’s meal.
George still wasn’t interested. And I knew he was getting hungry because when we took George out of his enclosure, he was restless and you could feel tension in the length of him.
I finally told my mother that if he wasn’t going to eat the rats, we had better get him some mice so he wouldn’t starve. She took me to the pet store and we bought some mice. George had been eating dead prey for so long I couldn’t take the chance of feeding him live prey, so, wincing at the thought, I decided to kill a couple of mice. One at a time, I put them into a paper bag and smacked the bag on the side of the counter as hard as I could. I put each mouse into George’s enclosure whereupon George promptly swallowed each of them. After he ate a couple of mice, I left him alone for a day or so, since boas are not to be handled after they eat. And, because, frankly, I needed time to recover from the trauma of killing the poor mice.
When George’s owners returned, they were delighted to see how well their pet looked. My sisters and I were sorry to see George return home. Our mother didn’t share our dismay–she had never really liked having dead rats stored in the freezer.