Before I get to it, I’d like to sincerely thank all of the people who helped on this. John E Blue and Carrie were a wonderful help during the time of finding out this crisis – Many thanks. The support from everyone on MVF and iHerp was outstanding. With all of the crap that’s been going on in the world and life for everyone, I still find it amazing that a group of people can be so helpful, caring, and supportive. So thank you for making this place rock.
Well, here are my final thoughts on all of this, along with a synopsis and timeline as best as I can record.
November 24th – 11ish PM: While cleaning the snakes and getting ready for vacation, Viva! grabbed an constricted his substrate while walking by. Presumably a shadow, or overeager feeder, or whatever. I did notice it at this time, but since I’ve seen it so often and they’ve always figured out “this aint food”.. let it go, got ready and left. You’re supposed to gorge yourself on Thanksgiving, but c’mon.
November 29th – 10ish PM: Came home, first thing I did was check on the snakes. Opened his tub to a bare substrate and him perched in a very oval shape over the X crossing of his branches. Freaked out and called Holland, then Carrie. During this time I took Viva! out and handled him. Agitated him. Pissed him off. And he opened his mouth for a gurge, for a good number of minutes. 3-4 I’d guess. He didn’t do the S body curve type motions, just wide open mouth. I found a 24h vet clinic that dealt with reptiles, so headed out.
The vet clinic checked him out which consisted of looking at him and holding him, seeing his responsiveness and all of that. He was alert through this whole time, and outside of having that monstrosity in his belly, perfectly fine. The clinic said that there was not enough of an emergency to get a surgeon in, and that a forced regurge wasn’t something they wanted to do. Also, that hydrogen peroxide wouldn’t help them gurge. So I took the animal back home, and soaked him in his tub with ¼ to a ½ inch of water.
November 30th – 8am: called the vet, and was told I’d get a call back. Took the snake with me to work as at this point I thought the only way this animal is going to live is if it’s surgically removed. During the next few hours at work I was alerted to a post of a baby boa that had gone through the same thing. From the pictures, looks like somewhat equivalent proportions of towel. Between this and the volume of people who had told me they thought it’d be fine, as well as the “my snake defecated a towel” stories, I thought things has a good chance of ending well.
November 30th – 12pm: Vet called back, and told me he thought the snake would pass it, and not to worry just yet. Since the snake was still stable, no need for emergency action now. So, armed with all of this, I felt pretty good about everything. I took the snake home during lunch. His cage setup at this point was no branches, water substrate, and an inverted glass jar lid for drinkin’ water (which he turned into a perch… god I love these animals). Temperatures were kept consistent at 84-85 on the warm end, possibly a couple of degrees variance toward the cool end.
December 1st – Nothing really happened during the day, I set up the webcam in the evening. While watching the webcam, saw a great number of yawns from the snake. Now, I don’t know if this was going on the whole time, or just this night as prep for a gurge, but there was definitely a whole lot of yawning going on.
I watched until probably 1am I’m guessing, then hung out on the sofa, had a glass or two or three of wine, and watched some tube. I didn’t get to bed until around 4. Checked on him before bed, and everything was status quo. Woke up around 8, went downstairs to get some water and checked the cam, which had stalled out. Went upstairs to the snake room and found him gurging, which excited me for a second, until I realized there was no movement. Picked him up and he was limp. Based on the chat room comments, it happened between 6am and 7am. Regardless, the 4 hour window I choose to sleep was his window.
I took a couple of pictures, and then took the tub to the sink. When I pulled out the paper towel, there was only 2” – 3” left to be gurged.. he’d gotten the majority of it out, and had very little way to go. So close, yet so far. On the last two inches of paper towel, there were a couple of brown marks. Tiny, but possibly evidence that it went further than the stomach and got rejected there.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Hindsight is wonderfully 20/20.
There are two things that I’m beating myself up about.
1.) I saw him strike the towel. And I thought, “You silly ass” and let him be. When you see the crisis starting, and don’t do anything and the snake dies, that just blows. So from now on, if I ever see a snake grab something not appropriate, I’m breaking it up while it’s happening. I’ve gotten very lazy with feeding all of my babies in 5 minutes flat, and assuming everything has gone well. Sometimes I’ll check them before I go to bed, sometimes I don’t, and I think I’m more in the routine of don’t.
2.) Soaking the animal, unsupervised, might have brought this house of cards down. Yes, great for the snake and hydration and digestion, what I didn’t consider was the wicking properties of the towel when it came up. I had thought “def def def” and didn’t think gurge because he’d tried it before, and couldn’t get it up (I hate when that happens). Potentially the wicking of the PT in the water substrate swelled that towel up, made it heavier, and blocked his breathing, caused water to enter the airway… I don’t know.
Strangely, the span of time on mine and the boas was 7 days. The paper towel in the Boa case looked too clean to come out of the cloaca in my opinion only, I think that might have been a gurge. According to the OP, he thinks it was rectally but did not see it. My thoughts were that since it’d been so long since he ate it, it was well in the lower tract and not possible to regurge. I was very wrong about this.
Were this to happen again, I don’t know that I’d operate. Again, with my lousy luck with vets, the expense involved (which is secondary, if not lower on the list), I think this guy had an excellent chance for non-surgical survival. If I were there when it was going on, I might have been able to help tug at it and get it out quicker. That alone may have saved him.
I’d heard that the paper towel can stick to the stomach and intestines and dry it out, fuse, and that would be the end. In this case, he ate a wet paper towel, which I’m not sure how much of that water in there got absorbed into the body, or if the PT remained damp throughout. The notable point here being that after 7 days, and with some def on it, it did not dry out the animal, and was possible to come back up through the mouth. There were recommendations of mineral oil, feeding a small pink with mineral oil. Forced hydration. I did none of these, and the towel was still able to come up “on its own”.
As for substrate in the future, I really don’t know. I loved those Viva towels because I can drop one in, they’re super absorbent and retain the water much longer than anything else, and are a breeze to clean up. They don’t disintegrate into nothing, they stay in tact for a quick, easy clean. Husbandry wise, they are the best product. Of course, until someone eats it. For now, my chondros are still on the Viva, I’m going to be changing up this weekend.
The snake is safely in my freezer. Although I don’t know the technical cause of death as Carrie asked, I’m not going to have a formal necropsy done.
And maybe this is just such a fluke that whatever I do from here on in is moot. A lot of people I talked to were incredulous, to the point of asking, “are you SURE?” … so I don’t know that changing husbandry for anyone else is in order, however if it’s happened once, it will happen again eventually. If it does happen again, or you’re reading this thread in the future and it’s happened to you, feel free to contact me any time.
RESOURCES
MVF Thread
http://moreliaviridis.yuku.com/topic/13511
iHerp Answers
http://www.iherp.com/Answers/ReptileProblem.aspx?id=10649
Boa Paper Towel Thread
http://www.darksidereptiles.com/forum/index.php/topic,2528.msg30360.html#msg30360
Thanks again to everyone for the help, condolences, and friendship.