My first Albino Carpet Python clutch of 2016 hatched from 23-25 March and I was lucky enough to be able to capture several nice pictures of the process.

For me, hatching snake eggs is something that keeps me involved in snakes year after year. It is the big reward. All year long I work hard to clean my snakes and keep them watered. I pay thousands of dollars to keep them warm and on rodents to feed them. My feed night is Friday each and every week, so I never get to go out for a night of fun on Fridays. Instead I am stuck at home after a long day at work with about 5 hours of extra work. But somehow all of that and the other downsides of keeping snakes vanish and disappear once eggs begin to hatch. It is a powerful moment when our eggs hatch and new life is brought forth. Where there once was nothing, there is suddenly something…and it is alive! Life can be messy, so I really liked getting this image where there is tons of bubbly egg goo all around the new living baby snake.

I am often asked why I like snakes and my response is that if you have to ask that question there is no way you would ever be able to understand. Seriously, if you can’t look at a picture of a baby python taking its first look and first breath on earth and find some way to be able to appreciate that the rest of us will enjoy living in an environment where people can marvel at even the lowest forms of organisms entering our rough world for their own one shot at LIFE.