PLAYFUL PYTHONS: STOCKARD BREEDS INTEREST IN SNAKES

Denny Stockard giggled as his father's 15-foot Burmese python snake hissed, then slithered a path from the garage to the driveway.

Perhaps this would be another opportunity for a bareback ride through the grass.

The 2-year-old boy, whose blond hair blends in well with the snake's light complexion, was so relaxed plopping down on the 85-pound albino's back, it looked like he was playing with a toy.

When the snake wrapped itself around Denny, it looked like the boy was sitting inside of a harmless stack of yellow tires. "Nice snake," Denny said as he leaned forward to pet the snake's head.

"He likes to ride them in the back yard a lot," Denny's father Shawn, who is something of a snake expert, said. "Denny thinks the snakes are a lot of fun. But my wife, Stephanie, doesn't like to get near them."

Stephanie Stockard kept a safe distance from the python snakes as her husband talked.

She doesn't dare take her eye off the snakes when her son has the urge to take a ride through the grass.

"The snakes have been in captivity all their lives," Shawn Stockard said. "They have been taken care of well enough that they have no reason to want to bite anybody. But when they're hungry, I wouldn't want to let them around my Chinese pug dog. I'd better take him in the house before they eat him."

Stephanie Stockard said, "Shawn used to keep the snakes in the house when they were little. I didn't like them even when they were small, but it's something he really likes so I put up with it."

Shawn Stockard plans to transfer his six snakes from his garage into a newly fashioned shed situated about 10 feet from the garage. The shed will be equipped with tanks and heaters to keep the snakes comfortable during the winter.

For now, however, the garage serves as a temporary breeding ground. Stockard sells some snakes to pet stores in Nashville, Tenn., and keeps the ones he thinks will want to get acquainted with a few of his albinos.

"I like to move them around to different tanks when they get bored," he said. "You can tell by the way they're acting whether or not they're bored."

Stockard doesn't collect snakes for sheer profit.

"I ended up just trading a few snakes for another one that I liked," Stockard said. "That's happened a couple of times."

As the snakes slowly uncoiled and poked their heads out of the glass tanks, Stockard identified which month each of the females was prone to mate.

"This one is a November breeder and that one will breed in December," Stockard said, nodding in the direction of two snakes he let crawl around in his driveway. "When the male snake is breeding he doesn't want to have anything to do with food. When another male snake gets on top of him when he's trying to breed, he'll knock the male snake off. He just likes to concentrate on one thing."

Stockard feeds his snakes 10-pound rabbits. Pythons strike their prey with a bite or two, then wrap themselves around the body to complete the kill. It takes them an hour or so to digest their meal.

"The males may only eat two or three times a year, but then I will probably feed the females a rabbit a week for a few weeks when they're breeding," he said.

During a casual conversation, Stockard will reveal much about the breeding and eating habits of snakes in general and even more about the ones he owns. It takes 90 days for the snakes to lay eggs and 60 days for them to hatch. They come from South America and like it when the temperature gets around 90.

If you want to breed snakes, you have to wait a couple of years. "They don't even become sexually mature until their three years old," Shawn Stockard said.

Stockard, 23, has been fascinated with snakes ever since he saw his first garden variety as a boy.

"I've liked snakes ever since I can remember," he said. "They're not very intelligent or anything. Their brain is probably the size of a pinhead. But for some reason I like to read about them, watch my son play with them and breed them."

His oldest snake, which was a gift from a former girlfriend seven years ago, has a dark green and brown coat.

"After I got the first one, I decided it would be fun to have more," he said. The most expensive snake cost $2,500.

"It can become an expensive hobby, but you can get a lot of the money back when you breed and sell them," he said.

When the snakes make a slow departure from their glass-encased tanks, they begin to hiss and move their heads as if they are stalking their prey.

"This one looks a little hungry," Stockard said. "You can tell when the skin starts to look a little loose," he said, lifting the tail to show how lean the snake was.

This snake wasn't interested in feeding on any rabbits, however. "It's breeding time," Stockard said, looking confident he would soon be getting another return on his investment.

Will this transaction turn a tidy profit? Maybe, unless of course, Stockard can be persuaded to make a trade for another interesting snake.

"Now you know why I had the snake house built," Stockard said.