We decided to try our hand at breeding this year. Years ago, two of our snakes bred (they were both females, ha, ha, joke was on us!) and in our inexperience, we let the eggs die. So after lots of research, we decided to try again.

Even though we have a male pastel ball python, we decided to put the male that bred Wilson before in with her. Both are normals. Del proved to be just as studly as he was four years ago, and breeding began. They locked up almost immediately, and stayed that way for 24 hours. I jokingly told my husband that some women have all the luck. He was not amused.

We let Wilson and Del together for a few days, to see if they would lock again, but once was obviously enough. Del returned to his own enclosure, we waited.

We had long ago decided we wanted to be different. Everyone says incubator, incubator! Well, we opted for maternal incubation. Yes, it's hard on the female, and keeps you from being able to breed again that year. We aren't breeders, we had no interest in breeding her again this year. We wanted to see the process, I guess getting as close as we'd ever see to them breeding and incubating in the wild. Though we had an incubator ready for back up in case something went wrong.

July 13th, Wilson laid a clutch of 5 eggs directly under her heat lamp, instead of in her hide box like last time. Figuring she knew what was best, we left her to the baking of baby snakes. Ever the smart mother, she had no need to leave the nest to bask and warm up, no shivering to bring up her own body temperature.

During the incubation, we had worries. The eggs started to sink in, discolor, and looked nothing like the pictures of viable eggs looked like. But my husband and I reminded ourselves, those are eggs in an incubator, not being hatched by the snake itself. So we left them be. We worried that Wilson would get underweight and become ill. So we watched for signs.

In about the fourth week, our first real problem came about. Wilson had come into shed. She left her nest long enough to get some of the skin off her face, but her body was still covered in old skin. It literally looked like it had exploded on her body. So we fretted. Do we pull her off and soak her? Do we leave her and see if she gets it off herself? If we remove her, how combative will she be?

After a day of debate, we decided that the eggs weren't worth her getting infections from old skin, so hubby donned a pair of gloves and opened the door. We really expected her to be come aggressive, to protect her clutch, but shockingly she only coiled tighter. He gently removed her from her nest and she allowed him. No aggression, no bites, no need for the gloves. It was as if it was no different than any other time he'd removed her from her tank. Now, I knew these two had a bond, but not like that! We placed her in the soak tank and decided we would check out the eggs.

One egg we could tell immediately was a dud. The other four, though they looked rough, showed signs of life. Carefully replacing them how he found them, my husband shut the enclosure door. We gave Wilson her soak time, pulled her out and my husband wiped all the old skin off. We checked her out, making sure that four weeks without a meal wasn't taking a tole on her body. She had lost some weight, of course, but was not unhealthy. So we returned her to her tank.

September 18th, my husband comes banging on the bathroom door, "We have babies!" We both rush in, and watch with wonder as we see this tiny head sticking out. It was amazing to watch Wilson, curled around these now white and brown eggs, and a head hardly bigger than my thumb looking around. I guess we spooked it, because it sucked back into the egg. We had to wait about ten minutes before it would come back out. About two hours later, it was finally free of the egg that protected him for all those months. Again worried of her reaction, but knowing she would crust that tiny baby, my husband reached in and removed it from the nest. He passed it to me, and I just stared in absolute wonder. Never before had I held something so tiny and so fragile. And I was helping it get its first look at the world.

Out of the four eggs, three hatched. The last egg was developed, but did not make it. We suspect because it was on the bottom of the pile, it was unable to escape the egg. If we'd have realized, we would have helped, but we were learning.

Wilson is back to powering down her food, trying to regain the weight she lost while incubating her eggs. She's almost there. Soon she'll return to the finicky eater she was before breeding season, but hopefully not until she's back up to weight. There is discussion of breeding her to our pastel next year, but we will see.