Apophis, blizzard corn snake

This is soon to be my newest brother - Apophis, a blizzard (i.e. completely white) corn snake.

Right now he lives at the Nature Center at Jones Beach; as soon as I have enough money for a tank to house the five foot long beauty, he'll be coming home with me.

One of the fellows who works at the NC is friends with a guy who works in pest removal. Apparently, this guy got a call one day from someone panicking over a snake in their shed - when he went to take care of the problem critter, he found a five foot long white snake. Chris, the guy from the Nature Center, specializes in herpatology (reptiles and lizards), so he ended up taking the snake into the NC.

They don't have the space for him (he's five feet long, and needs a tank at least that big), so they offered him to me - there was no way I could say no, as I've been thinking about getting another snake for awhile now, and I LOVE albinos (I have one snake already, an albino king snake - pink with yellow bands and red eyes- , named Xero.).

Apophis's only real problem is that he's almost completely blind - his eyes are a gorgeous blue color, but littered with cataracts. That doesn't stop him, however; he's very active, very curious, and has a voracious appetite. For rats. (No worries, I only feed my snakes pre-killed critters. I like rodents too much.)

That dark spot on his nose is a scab - since he can't see well, the old mesh top on his tank kept confusing him and he'd try to bust his way out, leaving a nasty cut in his nose... thankfully the scab is ready to come off and there's some nicely healed skin under it.

"Apophis", or "Apep", was the snake demon in Egyptian mythology, who continaully attempted to foil Ra's daily Sun-bearing journey down the Nile. He was also a thorn in the side of the members of SG-1 (for you Stargate fans), which is actually where I got the name from