Freshly-Shed BCC's

[pitbulllady]

Both of my Suriname Red-Tailed Boas shed within a couple of days of each other, the female two days ago and the male shed this evening. With him, this is a large victory of sorts. He got burned very badly on his underside back in February when the thermostat on his undertank heater stopped working and allowed the heat mat to get way too hot. He actually had third-degree burns on about a three-inch section of his abdomen, with second-degree burns spreading out much further than that. I had to give him antibiotic injections for two weeks, soak him daily in Betadine solution, debride the wound area every other day with Chlorhexidine, and apply topical antibiotics daily for several weeks, while changing his cage substrate daily. His first three sheds after being injured were of course abnormal and he required me basically to strip the old skin off piece by piece since he was unable to shed without help. This is the first time he actually managed to shed completely without my assistance and without any pieces being left on him. It cost me several hundred dollars in vet bills and medications to pull him through this, but I still think he was worth every penny. Throughout all this, with treatment that amounted to torture(if any of you have ever had a bad burn, you know how painful they can be to treat and how long they take to heal), he has never once attempted to strike or bite me, even though he sure has had plenty of reasons to do so. Most dogs would have ripped my face off unless muzzled or sedated, but this snake just put up with me scrubbing his wounds, peeling off necrotic flesh, applying ointments, giving him deep-muscle injections, soaking him, drying him off, peeling off stuck eyecaps and the rest of the old skin and all the other stuff that goes along with burn treatments. When you consider that he is a wild-caught import direct from Suriname, brought in as a young adult, not a baby, it's all the more remarkable.

Anyway, without further ado, here they are. The female is the one with the animal shapes on her, the cows and bunny rabbits and cats. The male has an odd orange spot on the back of his neck; it's not a scar but just strange coloration. Both of them have very aberrant patterns. I'm not sure if either of their patterns are genetic or not since both are wild-caught imports with no known background, but it will be interesting to find out.

Enjoy!

pitbulllady

 

[Malhavoc's]

considered them enjoyed, though that is an intresting spot behind the ones head, is that a birthmark type deal or a fault in the photo?

 

[pitbulllady]

considered them enjoyed, though that is an intresting spot behind the ones head, is that a birthmark type deal or a fault in the photo?

It's just a patch of orange pigment. When I got him, I kept feeling that spot for abnormal scales or texture, thinking it was an injury that hadn't quite healed, but it feels like the rest of his scales. It's just the coloration that's odd, so I guess you could consider it to be a "birthmark" or "beauty spot". It seems to get brighter orange with each shed. He has a couple of other, but smaller, orange spots elsewhere on his body. Both of these snakes have aberrant patterns, which are consistent with the "Jungle" genetic morph that occurs in Colombian Boas, but since they are wild-caught, I don't know if their patterns are genetic, or if they are, whether they will be dominant or recessive, so I can't really call them "Jungles". Pattern aberrencies in Boas that arent' genetic are usually caused by exposure of the gravid female to too-cool temperatures, and that is generally a problem with captive Boas, but I wouldn't think that would happen in the rain forests of Suriname!

An aquaintance of mine has a fully striped male Suriname import-actually the same guy I got the female from, so the striped one would have come in on the same shipment-that has a lot of intense orange on him, that I REALLY wish I could afford, but right now the guy is sort of "waffling" on whether he even wants to sell that snake.

pitbulllady