carpets are great, but if you want a "wade in" kinda snake burms are your teddy bears easyer to handel then a retic. But if you want somethin with alil more bite, but that stays semi arboreal even when its huge, an has the temperment an responce of retic a Scrub python can work wonders ^^. My big southern scrub with my introduction into big snakes before i even got my burm lol. She partialy helped prepare me for my retic exprence.