That cute little snake in the pet store tank, it’s lovely brown and gold or yellow and orange (if it happens to be an albino) colors that are so attractive – at 16 to 20 inches, a baby Burm doesn’t seem intimidating even if it may seem aggressive like most hatchling snakes. If you are considering a Burmese Python as your first snake, I’d like you to finish reading this article that tells you why not to get a Burmese Python as your first snake.

A Burmese Python can grow ten feet in one year. This is not an exaggeration. I’ve owned Burms. They grow fast, are voracious eaters, and they can be aggressive. I do not recommend them to any as a first pet reptile.

Burms can grow to 20 feet or better in captivity. After they reach 5 or 6 feet, most owners realize what they’ve gotten into, and start trying to find a new home for the once-cute, once-little snake. Good luck. Pet stores can’t give them away, you can’t sell them for any price, and your family and friends likely already know better. So what do you do now? Most humane societies won’t take them, because they don’t have the facilities and also because most people have a healthy fear of snakes. Herp Societies will take them when and if they have the ability to, and they are so often swamped with ten foot Burms and adult green iguanas, they can’t even handle the overflow.

Keeping a Burm is an interesting adventure. They will eat – and eat and eat. You have to know when to say ‘enough’. And after they do all this eating, you know what is next. As soon as you finish cleaning that cage, your snake (of any breed, actually) is going to take a dip in his water dish and leave you a package in the corner. With a Burm, these little presents aren’t so little. A ten foot snake can leave quite a pile of droppings, and if you don’t clean it up right away, everyone in the house will know.

A Burm will quickly outgrow the twenty gallon aquarium he started out in. In fact, an aquarium just won’t do after awhile. Our 16-foot Burm required a walk-in closet that we converted over to a cage. There was a lock on the cage, for her safety as well as ours. So two more things to consider are – Do you have the room to properly house your pet Burm, and do you have the money to care for him? A run to the vet can cost several hundred dollars. Feeding him will be relatively expensive, as you will have to provide an adult Burm with a full grown rabbit or chicken once a week, or more if your snake is a large female.

Burms have a reputation for being aggressive, but when properly cared for this is not a problem. The problem arises when an owner doesn’t take proper care of the pet snake. The snake associates human interaction only with feeding time – and someone will end up getting bit, the snake will be taken to the nearest place that will take him, and there will be one more ‘mean’ , large snake that is homeless.

Friends and family seldom understand one wanting a snake as a pet. Believe it. They will avoid coming to you house in extreme cases, and will look at you oddly and laugh when you ask them to pet-sit when you want to take a vacation. And never, never try sneaking a pet reptile into a house or apartment you share with another person. Sooner or later, the critter will be discovered, you will be in trouble, and you both may be homeless.

Taking your Burm somewhere can turn into a major project. Our Maggie traveled to educational shows in one of those giant plastic toolboxes for the back of pickup trucks, bungee-corded closed. Not that this actually kept her in the box when she wanted to have a look around. We were driving down the road one day, wondering what all the people passing us were looking at. I glanced in the back to discover Maggie had pushed a corner of the lid up, and she was hanging about two feet out of the box, watching traffic go by much to the shock of people driving next to us. If she had wanted to get out, she could have. Unwinding a snake from beneath removable minivan seats takes a couple hours if they are being uncooperative and you are alone. It also takes more than one person to pick up and carry a big snake, because Burms seldom fit in pillowcases more than a few months.

So, if you think you can handle all this, don’t go get a Burmese Python yet. Go research all the care they require. Read about their habits and their quirks. Know what your really getting into before you acquire any new pet, and you both will have much more enjoyable lives for it.