Imagine MY Surprise

[pitbulllady]

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I do free snake removal for my local communities. Most people think it's a service I provide for THEM, but in reality I do it for the snakes, to keep them from being killed. I put up flyers all over the nearby towns, especially in ag supply places and other local businesses, so people can contact me if they have an unwanted snake in their yard or house or other building, and I go remove it. I get several calls each year during the warm months(and here in SC, that's most months out of the year)to get snakes out of houses, barns, sheds, swimming pools(get LOTS of those calls), yards, etc. I've done this for many years, and I've come to the conclusion that at least 95% of the local snake population consists of members of the Rat Snake family, since that's about the percentage of my finds when I go out on these snake removal calls, especially if the snake is indoors. With only two exceptions until now, every single snake I've gotten out of a house or other structure has been either a Black Rat, a "Greenish" Rat(Black x Yellow Rat intergrade), or a Corn Snake. The two exceptions were a tiny little Red-Bellied Snake and a baby Eastern Hognose which had everyone in the house convinced that he was a Cobra. Both of those had actually been brought into the building by children, the Red-Belly having "hitchhiked" inside a child's book bag which the kid had stashed in the bushes outside the house to avoid doing homework, and the Hoggie having been intentionally smuggled inside a boy's pocket because his parents were terrified of snakes, later to escape its makeshift enclosure.

So, I get a call this morning from someone in a nearby town who works for a house cleaning crew, who'd been cleaning up an unoccupied house for a realty company to get it ready to sell. They rather agitated woman told me that they had arrived this morning to pick up some cleaning tools left behind yesterday, and had discovered a snake climbing up the bathroom medicine cabinet mirror. I asked her to describe the snake, and she told me it was "mostly orange and brown, with some sort of reddish color and some black and some white", but she wasn't getting close enough to tell me the markings. She did tell me it has a "small pointy head" and it was about four-five feet long and "skinny". So I'm thinking, typical Corn Snake, right? Everything added up to Corn Snake-the color and the body/head type, especially the mention of orange coloration.

I get directions and arrive at the house. It's not in one of the best neighborhoods, and older, small wooden house surrounded by other small wooden houses, with a really overgrown yard. The woman from the cleaning crew is waiting outside the house for me, scared to go in, and directs me to the bathroom from the screened-in little porch. The house is empty, and she explains that it has been unoccupied since early March, and was fully of loaded bags of trash, including dirty baby diapers, when she and her crew arrived last week to start cleaning. There are mouse droppings everywhere, all over the floors next to the walls and all over the counters, and my asthma immediately starts acting up because of the mouse odor, so it's no surprise that a snake would be attracted to this place, which must have been like an all-you-can-eat buffett to a snake

So, imagine my absolute shock and surprise when I go in the bathroom and find NOT the expected Corn Snake on the mirror, but THIS:

I had to stare at him for five minutes to let it sink in what I was looking at, in a run-down little neighborhood in an abandoned house. I can only assume that the previous occupants of the house had owned him, and abandoned him when they left to fend for himself, though how he survived is beyond me. I know he must have had plenty to eat, but these need a lot of heat and humidity. He's in pretty bad shape, actually. You can see his backbone sticking up as well as his ribs, and I can feel gurgling when he breathes, so I know there's a RI going on, not surprisingly. He's got some bite wounds on him as well. He's about 3 feet long and probably does not weigh as much as my yearling Corn Snakes. He was very lethargic when I picked him up and really does not react much at all to me. When I got him home, he must have consumed close to his own weight in water while soaking. I've put a heat light and heat pad on him, and he has become more active and alert, at least, since warming up, and he's not gurgling nearly as bad as he was when I first picked him up. I'm going to try him later today on a couple of f/t mice to see if I can get him to eat, otherwise I will have to try to force-feed him to get some nutrition in him. Other than some bites which are healing, his skin looks good, though, and still has that characteristic rainbow which gave his family its common name. I've been hemming and hawing about getting one of these, but haven't because of their more "picky" humidity requirements, and never figured I'd actually find one inside an empty house! I just hope the little guy makes it; I know they aren't as forgiving about neglect as Boa Constrictors or Ball Pythons are, and I don't think I've ever held a snake that was this skinny before. If anyone keeps these successfully, and there are any "tricks" of caring for them I should know, how about let me know so I can get him back on track.

pitbulllady

 

[Crysta]

lucky!!! such a beaty, and a surprise. I am sure he will make it!

 

[RoachGirlRen]

Ack, that poor snake is so SKINNY! It's very lucky you found it; even if it will not be able to rebound from such neglect, it will at least die warm and hydrated. I'm really hoping it pulls through, though. Keep us posted!

 

[Toirtis]

Pretty standard boa care, just mind you keep the humidity up and provide plenty of hides (they tend to be pretty cryptic).

Nice catch. I do the same thing here, and in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, all we have for natives are garter snakes and bullsnakes....over the past five years alone I have caught 2 ball pythons, 3 milksnakes, 3 kingsnakes, 2 boa constrictors, and even a whitethroat monitor (found wandering through a park)....and that does not include all the abandoned animals found inside buildings.

One of my fave stories to date is the East Indian family who called me about a snake in the driveway off their new home....it was a native garter, but they were so terrified of snakes that none of the family (or their 4 visiting relatives from India) would go anywhere near the house until the snake was gone. Two things that made this really funny/interesting...they lived across the street from a natural area where there were likely 3-4 garter snake hibernacula (and therefore hundreds of garters), and the fact that whilst investigating their property, I discovered that they had a sinkhole under their concrete driveway about the size of a van.

 

[pitbulllady]

Pretty standard boa care, just mind you keep the humidity up and provide plenty of hides (they tend to be pretty cryptic).

Nice catch. I do the same thing here, and in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, all we have for natives are garter snakes and bullsnakes....over the past five years alone I have caught 2 ball pythons, 3 milksnakes, 3 kingsnakes, 2 boa constrictors, and even a whitethroat monitor (found wandering through a park)....and that does not include all the abandoned animals found inside buildings.

One of my fave stories to date is the East Indian family who called me about a snake in the driveway off their new home....it was a native garter, but they were so terrified of snakes that none of the family (or their 4 visiting relatives from India) would go anywhere near the house until the snake was gone. Two things that made this really funny/interesting...they lived across the street from a natural area where there were likely 3-4 garter snake hibernacula (and therefore hundreds of garters), and the fact that whilst investigating their property, I discovered that they had a sinkhole under their concrete driveway about the size of a van.

Pretty typical of ophidiophobes to worry about a little snake when there is a cavern underneath your property that can open up and swallow your entire house in an instant!

pitbulllady

 

[PrimalTaunt]

That's a great service you're doing. Fingers crossed for the little guy.

 

[Toirtis]

Pretty typical of ophidiophobes to worry about a little snake when there is a cavern underneath your property that can open up and swallow your entire house in an instant!

pitbulllady

Funny thing is, they originally saw the presence of the snake as a bad omen...I explained to them that the snake was good luck, as they probably would not have learned of the sinkhole until their driveway collapsed. I do not think it made them any less phobic, though.

 

[Beardo]

Wow, that IS pretty crazy lol. At least you have it now and it is in good hands.

One thing though....too much heat can & will harm a Rainbow Boa. They like it much cooler than most other boas and like a temperature range of 75-85.....and hotter than that and you will have problems down the road.

 

[Tom2634]

How do you go about picking up and handling these wild snakes? I live in MN so I don't see many snakes (I can probably count the number of times on one hand in the 15 or so years I've lived here). It just seems that every time I saw a garter snake and tried to catch it when I was younger they would always at least try to bite. Is there a trick to keeping them calm other than not squeezing them too hard?

 

[pitbulllady]

Wow, that IS pretty crazy lol. At least you have it now and it is in good hands.

One thing though....too much heat can & will harm a Rainbow Boa. They like it much cooler than most other boas and like a temperature range of 75-85.....and hotter than that and you will have problems down the road.

85 is actually the temp at which I keep my BCC's and BCI's, with the cooler end dropping to around 78. I lower the temp during the fall to encourage breeding. I'm keeping this guy at the same. He's been spending most of his time soaking on the cool end, though. No luck getting him to eat f/t, so far, so I'm going to give him a few more days before trying to feed him again. I normally do that with a new snake, anyway, but given his condition he really needs to eat ASAP. I'm not hearing or feeling any gurgling when I hold him now, so hopefully the RI was mild enough to respond to the correct temperatures.

Oh, and Tom...I don't even worry about getting bitten anymore, not by non-venomous, anyway. I've got a pretty high tolerance for pain and I don't even consider snake bites to be painful. Keep in mind that I find getting a tattoo to be a relaxing and pleasurable experience. I have found that grabbing a snake is almost guaranteed to get you bitten, though, while picking it up by sliding your hand underneath and gently lifting it works really well. I don't squeeze them or forcibly restrain them, but sort of let them "run" and keep moving my hands underneath to control their movement until they calm down and figure out that I'm not going to eat them. It works really well, especially with species like Coachwhips and Water Snakes, which have that bitey reputation.

pitbulllady

 

[Beardo]

Cover his cage with a blanket or sheet....leave him in total darkness so that he doesn't see any outside movement at all. Then offer him a smalle than usual prey item (don't want to shock his digestive system with a normal sized meal)....gradually increase the size of the food until he is eating a normal sized rat for his size. I would imagine that the animal is going through a good amount of stress at the moment and trying to shove food in its face every couple of days will only compound this.....just be patient & the snake will realize that the food you're offering is a good alternative to nothing.

 

[dtknow]

I would put more stock in him escaping rather than being intentionally abandoned. Beautiful none th less. Hard to believe the lady didn't see anything special in it huh(I've got this brownish-red snake that shimmers like a rainbow in the light and its got these black ringed orange circles on its back...lol)

 

[Shrike]

Now there is something you won't find every day. I hope it pulls through.

 

[pitbulllady]

I would put more stock in him escaping rather than being intentionally abandoned. Beautiful none th less. Hard to believe the lady didn't see anything special in it huh(I've got this brownish-red snake that shimmers like a rainbow in the light and its got these black ringed orange circles on its back...lol)

I doubt that she got close enough to see the rainbow effect, since she was not really happy about it being there at all! I'm more inclined to believe that the snake escaped, too, rather than being deliberately abandoned.

I'm still not having any luck getting it to eat, though. I hate to try live mice, but that could be all that the snake has been eating, so I might have to make a 45-minute drive to Pet Smart to get a couple of small live mice, anything to trigger a feeding response. I'll have to tackle the switch-over to f/t once I've put some weight on the snake.

pitbulllady

 

[pitbulllady]

UPDATE-My little foundling BRB did eat two live mice(well, they were live when I put them in his cage, anyway)today. I don't like feeding live, but with him in such poor weight, I had to do SOMETHING. I didn't feel that there was much leeway to "wait and see", since I've never seen a snake so thin. I'm hoping that once I can get some weight on him, he will switch over to eating f/t. My allergies are absolutely killing me right now. I'm allergic to rodent dander, don't know if I've ever mentioned that or not, which is why I can't raise my own feeders and have to drive an hour and a half(one way)to buy snake food. I had to pay 2.00 each for these mice, compared to the .50 I normally pay, but I do feel more hopeful now that he's eaten SOMETHING. I've got him on aspen bedding instead of the newspaper, I put him in a Tupperware container rather than the standard glass snake tank, with a large bowl to keep the humidity up, and I've got him at 83 degrees, which is recommended, so it seems that these are the conditions that favor him the most. This is the first Epicrates I've dealt with first-hand, and I've actually put off getting one intentionally due to having read that they can be difficult snakes to keep, but apparently I've hit on the right "formula" and he will start to improve.

pitbulllady

 

[PrimalTaunt]

Forgive my ignorance (I admire snakes but not enough to have ever seriously considered getting one) but you've brought up a question that I've had about feeding.

Why do most keepers do the frozen/thawed thing? Is it to prevent injuries to the snake? To give the mouse a quick death as opposed to the snake? Do you buy them pre-killed or kill them yourself? And how will you go about transitioning from live to frozen/thawed?

So that may have been more than just a question that I've had but when I get on a roll... If you don't feel like writing an essay to answer it I'd understand (but maybe point me to a decent website).

 

[ZergFront]

:evil:

Pretty snake. Glad you found it before some cruel teenagers did.

Does it anger anyone else that appreciates snakes, who would take good care of the animal and love it if they could have afforded to buy one. Then find that someone got the same animal just to later abandon and neglect it?

 

[Faing]

Forgive my ignorance (I admire snakes but not enough to have ever seriously considered getting one) but you've brought up a question that I've had about feeding.

Why do most keepers do the frozen/thawed thing? Is it to prevent injuries to the snake? To give the mouse a quick death as opposed to the snake? Do you buy them pre-killed or kill them yourself? And how will you go about transitioning from live to frozen/thawed?

So that may have been more than just a question that I've had but when I get on a roll... If you don't feel like writing an essay to answer it I'd understand (but maybe point me to a decent website).

Everybody has their own reasons but this site pretty much mentions the top 3 reasons why people use F/T.
http://hubpages.com/hub/Feeding_Frozen

 

[SixShot666]

Great story.....Hope all goes well for you!!!

 

[pitbulllady]

WOOT! He just ate two small f/t mice! I have not felt or heard any of the gurgling that I did when I first found him, so apparently the RI was mild and has responded to the correct temperature and humidity, so barring any other unseen health issues, he should start to pick up weight and condition. If not, a fecal exam will be in order for parasites that would cause him to continue to be skinny, but otherwise, I'm hoping to see a big turnaround with this little guy.

He's certainly a very mellow and docile snake, not at all like what I've heard about BRB's. He has shown no interest at all in a climbing branch in his enclosure, but he does like to burrow down in his aspen bedding. The bedding and the humidity seems to have been the key to getting him to eat; most of my snakes are on newspaper, and do just fine, but this one really seemed to be uncomfortable on it, even with a hide box. He also likes cooler temps than my big guys, sort of reminding me of a little Retic, since every Retic I've ever had would avoid the hot side of their cage like the plague except right after they had just eaten.

pitbulllady