If you want to find out the cause of death, the only way would be with a necropsy. If she decides to go that route, do not freeze the animal, instead place it in the refrigerator and call to set up a time to drop it off.

Oh, and the amount od defecations it had is within normal and the position that it was found in is pretty typical. Sorry she lost him. : (

Well, Thank you for the responce. Sadly at this point and time she doesn't have the money to have a necropsy done, as the cheapest one out here is still over 300$.

In the first year of life, especially, sometimes it just happens and we don't know why. I think the best thing to do in a situation as such is to double check all the aspects of its husbandry - make sure the temps. had been adequate... for example had it regurged because the hot spot wasn't hot enough... something like that so that you can learn from an error if there happened to be one or reassure oneself  that you had  been giving them the best care possible. : )

thats so sad, I'm sorry for her loss. I recently lost one of my snakes too, its never easy. 

You have to be careful when buying at expos, the first time I ever brought anything home from an expo was 2 sand boas, and one of them had an RI (which being a new snake owner and having never seen before didnt know what to look for X_X). He's ok now though, once i realized he was doing wierd things my bp never ever did I asked my forums about the symptoms.

Poor Red Tail :(

There are a lot of good vendors at expos.

And there are a lot of bad vendors at expos.

You can freeze the snake, and then when you're ready, thaw it out and do a necropsy of your own... if there was a huge piece of mulch in the snake, well, there's something. It's educational, you can take a look at all of the organs, and see if there's anything dramatically wrong. It's by no means scientific to say "this was the cause of death" but taking a peek inside isn't a bad thing.

This is eerily almost exactly like what happened to a baby red tail at the store this week.... like to the letter identical except there was no bulge or liquid with the red tail at the store....

but as you said... he regurged a couple weeks ago...ate fine the next week... had been acting perfectly normal..refused food monday and was dead on it's back tuesday.....

all other snakes at the store appear in perfect health.. even the other red tails that where in with this one ( i don't want to hear crap about keeping the snakes together.... i do not have a choice in the matter....)

very eerie to see this exact same thing happening somewhere else at roughly the same time...

oop didnt mean to imply that all vendors at expos are bad..we picked up a baby blue tongue and an albino het snow KSB, both from 2 different and wonderful vendors. Thankfully this experience was much different than our first experience.

Thank you guys,

Expo's are always....interesting...to say the least...I just found out that she had gotten this snake from the same place I had gotten a gecko that died just a few months after gettting her...interesting...well I'll be sure to never get things from them again, and warn my reptile loving friends.

We might just try and take a "peek" inside, but, that is up to her. Thanks for you surport.

Opps, the Above post ^ is me..I just had been useing, my friends computer...

I have opened up snakes before to try and figure out why they died. One time, I actually did find the likely cause... a large, fatty tumor that had grown out of control and tangled around the organs. Most times, you will find nothing by looking with the naked eye. I had a young male albino redsided garter snake die after his heart swelled up. You could see it right through him, and a few days before he died, his heart became large enough to create a bulge. After he died, I opened him up and verified that it was his heart. Why his heart swelled? Don't know... sadly. His sister is alive and well!

I have found my experiences in looking into snake's bodies to be really educational. It allowed me to become very familiar with how the organs lay in a snake's body, and to better understand where they are when looking at an alive snake from the outside. That way, if you see some swelling, or odd symptoms in a certain area, you can better determine how serious the problem is, and what could be wrong.

sorry to hear about your loss.  while i like to acquire snakes as neonates, to be secure about their upbringing and overall health, this is one of the downfalls.  while it could have been something precise, it could just be failure to thrive on the snake's part.

I personally vend a few shows a year, and being a vendor, you find out somethings about other vendors that both make you better admire other vendors, and you overhear things about other vendors that make you want to just get out of the industry all together, and to swear of shows as well.  The thing to remember is to ask a lot of questions, and get a read on how they answer those questions.  Yes, we vendors ARE busy at shows, that said, I don't care how busy I am, if someone wants to buy something from me, I have a bunch of questions for them, and I expect them to have a bunch for me.  Another thing - how easily are they making themselves available to you after the show? are they providing anything? like phone numbers? email? website? I think those three are a must, and I personally get emails form peoppe within hours of getting them home. 

Also, ask about guaranees - just because it says X number of days, ask what exactly that means - does that mean health? gender guarantee? or that it's thriving and will take f/t every meal? be a snoop!!!! if they can't answer those questions about the snake you're interested in, and they can't get those answers quickly through a phone call or whatnot, it's probably best to move on......

Aww...sorry about her loss. That's really sad. :(

Well, we opened it up. We didn't see any blockage, or anything to 'weird' though I have never opened up a snake before. I took pictures of all the insides but I wasn't sure If I could post it here or not, or if any one would even be interested in seeing it.

Certainly you can post the images.

This was what came out of him, wasn't sure if there was anything interesting to it. 

So sorry about your loss thanks for posting those pics it was very interresting.

I've never seen the inside of a snake before. Really educational, I wish I knew more of what I was looking at. That said, I am sorry for your loss.

http://www.hometrainingtools.com/snake-dissection/a/1283/ < Describes differents parts of the snake. Sorry about your snakey :(

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