The picture above was taken the day after we put the new rope basket (see yesterday’s post) in the snake cage. He did investigate it, but in doing so knocked off the lid and squished the basket. The basket is semi-flexible, but doesn’t make a good hide if the lid is off. Hm. I decided to add a hinge and latch.

I had a premade rope frog (latch) in my stash that has been stashed for a couple generations. I sewed it on the basket. To make the hinge I just sewed one side of the lid to the basket, since the sides are flexible. As I was sewing, Izzy the cat decided that she would try out the basket on my lap. She didn’t fit.

This has become quite the fancy snake basket. Well, currently it is just a basket. The snake has yet to curl up in it, but it survived a night in the cage without collapsing, so we’ll see if he takes to it. At least it is washable if he decides we just gave him a second bathroom.

My eldest’s corn snake is a big boy, and has outgrown his favorite hide. We’ve been trying different things: he likes the large PVC tube section, but sticks out the ends, the large black plastic rectangle tub he decided was better as a bathroom than a hide, and the slabs of cork bark are fun to climb around, but not hide under. So I thought I would make him a basket. I purchased half inch polypropylene rope, which it is used for boating and is mold and mildew resistent, and sewed it together with bonded nylon thread.

Sewing a coil basket was easier than I feared. I chose a method where the needle is stuck through the top of the previous row, then wrapped around the current row. To make it better for snake habitation, I built in an entrance near the base.

The 50 feet of rope wasn’t quite enough to make an 11” diameter basket, so I added some red rope from my stash to the lid.

Now we’ll see how he likes it.