Mac was an Aru green tree python we owned from 2017 until his passing in 2021. He was awesome, so we recorded a little about him here!
We found Mac at the Daytona Breeder’s Expo in Florida in August of 2017. Getting him home was an adventure, because we were prototyping our arboreal tubs for transport (as it turns out, you really should have a peg to stabilize the pipe perches and stop them rolling. This is very important!).
So one THUMP into the bottom of the tub later, and Mac was sitting in the front seat of the car with us for the rest of the drive home. He didn’t seem to mind very much. He thought the dashboard was fascinating, and when we offered him some water out of a cheap plastic lid, he drank it down gratefully. This totally unknown green tree python we had just met.
Mac was 317g when we first weighed him 8/30. By 9/21, he had almost doubled in weight at 555g. This was all water weight. Whenever we offered him a tub of water, he would drink out of it—not your petite python sip, but all in. Stuffed his whole face all the way to the bottom of the dish and drank underwater.
Mac was making popping sounds and had some mucus, which we noticed almost immediately after we got him home. That was our first real experience with a respiratory infection, and the start of a series of very long stretches of antibiotics for Mac. He seemed better on antibiotics, but would start to get worse again a few weeks after starting them. Rinse and repeat.
The variety of parasites Mac came in with were “interesting” enough that our exotic vet sent a sample away to be tested; when he called us back, the vet said “So, yeah. Your snake is wild caught. Or someone has been catching wild rats for him and feeding him.” Hookworms, tapeworms…but really unusual ones.
Mac was one of the sweetest snakes I’ve ever met, and he was very forgiving. Ever had an injection of Droncit? I haven’t, but it apparently sucks. He hated it and would writhe every time he had to get it. He handled other injections like a champ, but Droncit was the devil. It bruised and discolored his scales (we can still see the marks from over a year ago). Even so, he never once tried to bite us. When we could, we’d bribe him afterwards with walks outside and sunshine, and he seemed mollified by the pampering.
I think treating the parasites made the antibiotics more successful, because for the most part since then, Mac was been very stable, and only has an occasional popping noise in his nose. He ate well (as often as our other males eat, anyway :P) and his weight was good, and he loved drinks and showers and walks.
Mac tested negative for Nidovirus when we swabbed him in 2019, but we still regarded him with some suspicion and kept his cleaning tools (and himself) separate from the other snakes. He sneezed periodically, but we didn’t know if it was damage from a long time in suboptimal conditions or snake allergies. Since he showed some improvement next to a HEPA filter, we believe it may have been a little bit of both.
Since we could never give Mac a 100% clean bill of health, we weren’t able to take him places to meet people or breed him. He started having some ongoing skin issues in 2019 and developed a respiratory infection in winter 2020. He passed away in February 2021 in spite of treatment.
We loved Mac very much, and enjoyed every day with him. We regret that he wasn’t able to be an ambassador snake—he would have loved it—but we worked to fill his life with love and sunshine, and he did the same for us.
