Cage

Since I bought a snake, I also had to get some enclosure for it. At the Hong Kong Reptile Expo we found a few people selling these and one of the snake breeders agreed that at HKD 280 they were a pretty good deal.

The cage I bought consisted of a metal frame, with side panels and top in metal mesh for ventilation, a black solid back panel and two sliding glass panels at the front for access and viewing. The whole thing was nicely flat packed which obviously was great for transportation.

When I started to put this together with a friend the flaws of the design became very clear:
- the different parts of the frame could not be fixed in place, which means that the snake would be able to push the top off the cage unless a weight was put on top
- the frame was not structurally solid
- the mesh top panel and the back panel were cut a few mm short so they could be pushed out easily
- there was no lock provided for the glass doors. I expect that a snake could accidentally slide the panel a little bit to the side and then push it further open over a period of time

After putting it together (or trying to) I decided that this was not the way forward. Not only would I be worrying whether the snake would be able to escape, it's also not fair to the animal to put it at risk by giving it an enclosure that is not strong enough or by allowing it to escape and get into trouble. So out ot went (not really, I used the frame as the base of a new side table - very crafty indeed) and the next day I bought a proper cage. Which cost exactly as much as the first one, but was of a far better quality.

Still - I consider it money well spent. It made me a lot more aware of what to look for when buying a cage so even though I lost HKD 280 I gained invaluable experience.