The Gradient a Milk Snake Moves Through
A milk snake's sitter instructions should open with the two ends of its enclosure: a warm end in the mid-to-high 80s Fahrenheit with a hide over the heat, and a cool end in the mid-70s with a second hide. This active, curious snake shuttles between the two to regulate itself, so both readings matter and both hides must stay where you left them. Write down where each thermometer probe sits, the reading each should show, and ask the sitter to glance at both daily. If your heat mat or overhead source runs through a thermostat — it should — name the setting and make clear it is already correct and not a dial to experiment with.
Light: Ordinary Days, Proper Nights
A milk snake needs a believable day and a genuinely dark night, and the sitter note should protect both. Room light or a low enclosure light on for roughly twelve hours is plenty; this species does its exploring at dusk and after dark, so a lamp blazing into the night disrupts the very behavior the sitter might enjoy watching. If lights run on a timer, say where the timer is and that its schedule is set. Warn against moving the enclosure toward a sunny window for extra light — a glass box in sun climbs in temperature faster than any thermostat can correct, and the cool end the snake depends on disappears.
The Lid and the Heat Source: Two Untouched Things
A milk snake is a committed escape artist, so the heating note and the security note are the same note: the lid stays clipped or weighted shut at all times, because a snake pushing at a warm, loose corner will find the gap. Pair that with the thermostat rule — the heat source is never run without its thermostat, and the probe stays taped where you placed it. If the sitter does a spot clean, the instruction is to work with one hand aware of the snake, remove only the soiled patch, and re-clip the lid before turning away. Most sitter disasters with this species are not heating failures but a lid left resting instead of fastened after a two-minute job.
Reading the Snake's Choices
Teach the milk snake's sitter to read where the snake is sitting as information, not a problem to fix. A milk snake parked in the cool hide for a day is thermoregulating, not sulking; one stretched along the warm end after a meal is digesting as it should. The time to message you is when the snake is soaking in its water bowl for hours outside of a shed, wheezing or holding its mouth open, or when a thermometer reads well outside the numbers you wrote. Note the snake's last feed and whether a shed looks due — a milk snake turning dull and blue-eyed should be left in peace with its water topped up, not handled for a closer look.
A One-Page Note Beats a Perfect Memory
Write a milk snake's instructions as a one-page checklist pinned at the enclosure: morning thermometer readings, water check, lid check, lights as set. Under it, list the two phone calls that matter — a temperature far out of range, or the snake found outside the enclosure — and reassure the sitter that a calm, contained search of the room beats a panicked one. Leave the feeding decision explicit too: if a feed is due during your trip, give the exact written routine; if not, say no feeding, because an unplanned meal plus handling is how regurgitation happens. Sending all of it through KinsLe's Care Pass means the person covering for you holds the gradient numbers, the lid rule, and the light times together in one clear set of instructions.