The Great Sprinkles Scavenger Hunt

Our Rosy Boa is named Sprinkles.  He's a little less than three feet long and dumb as a box of rocks.  We try to feed him, and he'd rather cuddle his food.  He has tried to kill Andy's bathrobe in an attempt to eat it.  He's never going to love us back, and we've accepted that.  Andy is prone to say that we only like him for his looks.  He is pretty.  And his is a very fascinating creature.  But he is definitely not bright in our traditional sense.  

And yet he can still outsmart us on occasion.  

"Who, me?" he seems to ask, plotting his next escape.

Andy set him in a box on the floor.  We normally move him into a different box when we try to feed him, so he doesn't associate hands coming into his tank with food coming into this tank; save a few bites that way.  Why it was on the floor instead of the kitchen table, though, was so we could, in Andy's words, "Keep a closer eye on him."  And yet, even with that thought specifically in mind, when Andy was ready with the mouse, Sprinkles was decidedly not in the box.  We had a "lid" on the box, his normal screen cage top, but this does not fit perfectly onto the box he was in.
  
So the two of us were wandering around on the floor calling "Here, Sprinkles!  Where are you Sprinks?"  Not that he would ever answer, but it made it fun for us to pretend (I, at least, was imagining him cackling to his little self as he slithered more deeply under cover somewhere).  

About twenty minutes later, I won the Great Sprinkles Scavenger Hunt:  he was behind the couch, content to explore all the dark places we had in the living room.  I picked him up and he was quite calm, as though his escape attempt was really no big deal, though I like to think that inside he muttered the word "Curses!" at least once.  

Once returned to his box, he was curious about the mouse we were trying to feed him, but he never went for it, spooked by it instead and shying away, choosing instead to re-explore the box to find another escape route.  

This is actually the second time that he's made an escape.  The first time, Andy had left the cage open overnight after giving him some more water.  Mike found him in the bathroom the next morning where he was calmly exploring all of the apartment, this the same snake that when he is being held sometimes forgets to hold on to you and plops to the ground with an ungainly thud if you don't realize in time.  I have to imagine that he did much the same coming down from his cage that night, just *flump* onto the carpet, looking around in some dull confusion before continuing his exploration.  

I promise to those that do not particularly care for snakes that this is not a common occurrence in the apartment, should you choose to visit.  He can plot just as well in his cage where he is, doing the snake equivalent of rubbing his hands together.  

This has been a small snippet of the Peterson Apartment.