Let's Get Physical

I had a good ol' physical yesterday.  And I'm one healthy girl.  The nurse was very happy with how healthy I was, I'm healthier then J.  Oh yeah.  That's what watching your caloric intake and making sure you live an active lifestyle gets you.  It does pay off.  And it means you don't have to give up any of the things you love, like cookies and cheeseburgers, you just have to eat less of them.  But anyway, the physical was for my insurance change.  J's insurance requires physicals before coverage begins.  So by next month I'll have new insurance.  Which will hopefully save us some money.

And then this morning when I got to work this was waiting for me.

At first I thought it was a joke the guy from the lab down the hall was playing.  He does that.  But I recognized the hand writing as our grad student. The grad student that is scared to death of snakes. So I knew it wasn't a joke.

 And low and behold, this was under the ice bucket.

The little ball python that had made a daring escape a few weeks ago. The lab he belongs to had torn apart their lab and the surrounding labs. But this little devil made it down the hall around the corner and hid out behind our fridge in the hall for a few weeks (we think). Then this morning he decided to venture into our lab.

And our grad student just happen to be in here at 5:00 am, so she was the first to find him.  She put a bucket on him and left the lab until I got there.  I told her I was proud at how calmly she handled the situation.  If it was a huge spider (which I know are in the building) I would have freaked out.

But he is now happily back in his lab.  He was climbing all over his little snake hut, I'm sure looking for a way to escape again.  They were extremely grateful that we had found him.  They are lucky that we found him and not one of the other labs that didn't know he was missing.

He's definitely a sneaky little shit.  He tried to escape his box four times while I watched him this morning.  And the last time he grabbed on to the side and fought me putting him back in.  Luckily he's a tiny guy, so he was easy to man handle.

He was pretty scared and, by the looks of it, very hungry.  His skin was very baggy and he was breathing very hard.  So I'm sure he's (sorta) happy he's back at home, getting fed and taken care of.  Yes, he's a research animal, no I don't know what kind of research they are doing with him, but I do know they usually adopt out the snakes when they are done, so don't worry.  They do a lot of reptile research, including respiratory research and anti-venom research (no this snake is not venomous).  This research is needed to help reptiles in captivity as well as in the wild.

So that was my exciting morning.  Helping a little ball python make it back to his home.  I kinda wanted to keep him and have him as our lab pet.  It would have been so much fun having a little lab snake, except that he would eventually get to be a big lab snake.  And we don't want that.  ;-)  Oh the joy of working in a vet school.  Now if only something cute would wander into our lab.