This year I have received gifts of light. Not that metaphysical kind, but actual lights!
On Christmas Day we went outside at -5F and finally strung up some lights on our deck. Given that we live just 200 miles south of the Arctic circle, in winter there is a lot of darkness, and while I don’t seem to be affected by the lack of sunlight, I do have a hard time seeing in the dark, and LOVE all the pretty lights that people put around their houses for the entire winter. We have been in our house nearly two years now, and I was starting to feel like old lady scrooge since we had the darkest house on the block. Now, while they are minimal, we have a nice string of lights around the front deck that we can control with a light switch inside the lovely warm house, and a bright blue string around the garage door on the back, hooked up to the timer so they are on when Michael comes home from work, and stay on just after until I get home from the studio around 10pm.
Also, I have been all but begging for lights to put into the snake rack. The rack itself is awesome, and though I really need to buy a couple 6 foot cages for the bigger boas, right now I have to make do with what I have. The snakes don’t care one way of the other, there is sunlight in the room (again, less than 4 hours a day right now) but unlike lizards, most snakes do not need UV lights and are happy being in the dark. I however, am not happy when I cannot see them, or see what mess they have made in the cages (picture me holding a flashlight to clean cages, and now picture all the grumblings and explicatives I say under my breath as I try to clean a cage with one hand).
After today, they are GLORIOUS with rope lights strung on all the levels and now I can see all my pretty babies without squinting or having to use the flashlight. Hooray!!