Let's all confess

[JimmyDavid]

Sometimes we can go hard on new guys that make stupid herp mistakes, but we were all unexperienced at some point and, of course, made our own mistakes.
Why not share our "nightmare" stuff with everyone here?

I'll start: I got a 3 to 4 foot water monitor once and loved him since the moment he arrived. He was a well fed, beautifull, TAME lizard. The very same day he arrived i decided to not mix him with another water i had just to let him settle down. So i let him in a big cardboard box with a lamp inside for heating and a bowl of water. I checked the temp and it was just fine. But i forgot that the inside of a cardboard box doesn't remain constant and it got extra hot in a few hours. Guilty as charged; the poor lizard died the same day he arrived because of a stupid mistake i didn't think of. That's my worst
nightmare mistake! how about you?

[BoidKeeper]

I recently over heated a $1000 ball python on the way home from the airport. The $1000 hurt but not as much as the fact that I killed an animal for the first and I hope last time. I keep hearing that the longer you stay in the this hobby the better you chances are of losing something well I guess my number was up.
That was recently though. Back in the day before I knew any better I did a few things that where not that bright but it never hurt any of my animals. I had an iggy with only a hot rock for the the first month or so that I had him. I kept Leos on sand.
Ever since I've been into snakes I've been on line and have been into the reaserch as much as the animals them selves so now I'd like to think that I do every as best as possible.
Cheers,
Trevor

[Removed_2815]

Originally posted by BoidKeeper
I kept Leos on sand.
Ditto! Used hot-rocks too *shudders* That was about 11 years ago now (no internet access, no literature - that I could find). I learned from that pretty quick, with no loss of life thankfully.
Ryan

[concept3]

When I was younger I had a pac man, and an american bullfrog both die of mbd because I did not know I had to supplement with calcium. Just thinking of them try to move around with their jell-o like legs makes me sick to my stomach./

[Lrptls]

i'v made SO many mistakes it's sad, i still make dumb mistakes but most of the time the animals dont get hurt, for example i forget to close cages alot and see a snake crawling out. one day my water dragons cage was open all day, he didn't get out though. i'll submit the problems i had with my first snake. i got a little garter snake and 3 days later she had a whole bunch of babies. i kept some, my mom took some and she gave some to a friend. a few weeks later the mother snake died. i eventually only had 2 babies. one escaped 3 times. the first time he was gone for about 3 months. the 3rd time i found him i put him with the other baby which he ate. i didn't want it any more so i let it go outside =/. soon my mom's snake tried to eat the other, she pulled it out of the snake and it soon died. then not long after the other one died. so now all the garters me and my mom had are dead, she lost touch with her friend so we have no idea how his snakes are doing if they wern't cursed like ours. the end

[Slipknot]

Biggest mistake...housed a W/C Rock Lizard with my Leopard Gecko. :(

[Lioness]

wow Lrptls..thats a sad sad story.. :(

im not a pro by far..but the stupidest thing i've done thus far is feeding my corn too soon after a regurge. (4-5 days)
sure enough.. i heard it from everyone here..i didnt fully understand how critical it was..but now i know. so i've learned my lesson.
thankfully my snake wasnt hurt..he digested it..and is doing well now.. matter of fact he's in shed again.
thats my only horror story..

[Manitoban Herps]

Ummmm.....Probaly 3 years ago when i bought a emerald swift, it was -30 outside and i put him down on my kitchen table which is close to the door, and went and helped bring in grocerys for 15 mins when the door of the house was wide open, his eye got infected and he died :(

But the lizard was not from the best supplier, so maybe it wasn't completly my fault.

[second skin]

I dont think there is enough space in ths forum , but I think the one that takes the cake is when my pet chameleon "walked" away in my own back yard
I had him out for some sun on one of my house plants and brilliant me thought it would be nice to go for a swim needless to say that was the last I saw of ol'spanky!

[marisa]

hmm probably keeping box turtles in small tanks on lettuce when I was REALLY young....used to catch mountain kings when I was young (under ten) and feed them then release them *shudder* that was horribly stupid....thankfully by the time I owned other reptiles years later I had done reading and had internet access.

Marisa

[Tim_Cranwill]

Keeping WC garters outside (well, in a garage but not a heated one) WELL into the autumn months with no heat source... and it gets COLD here! Then, keeping all 7 of them in a large aquarium with an exposed heat lamp in the science room and force feeding them pieces of chicken breast because they wouldn't eat. THEN letting them go in a near by field in the spring.... BAD MOVE!!!

That was about 13 years ago though. :( I didn't keep reptiles for about a decade after that, nor did I deserve to.

Great topic, Jimmy! :)

[dave68]

We've got a couple horror stories....sad but true I guess....We got a water dragon as a rescue and our oldest son had been taking care of it so well, feeding it mealies by hand and started to get really attached to "Tarzan", we came home with some live rodents (lrg rats) for the snakes that night, set them up in a cage and went about our day. Earlier in the day my son must have been feeding the dragon and forgot to close the cage properly, and the rat cage did not close properly, well let me tell you rats are nasty vicious savages when loose, we found blood everywhere and the water dragon half eaten, the saddest and sickest thing ever experienced:( Another time we stupidly decided to put a pacman frog in a huge Tokay terrarium as I had seen it at the zoo before, and knew Tokays could give a good bite, did not see it as a big problem, but one day the Mama tokay must have gotten too close to the frogs mouth and he swallowed her whole, worst part was when she came out she looked fine, just dead, she wasn't mangled or anything. That was a really stupid mistake really hard to deal with as this was our original female we ever started with, the male called her for months, so so sad...
Anyways theres ours...both these happened over 3/4 years ago and so far so good since then!!!!

[gargoyle]

It would have to be, putting my first Whites tree from near a window in a plastic (large critter keeper), then got really busy and forgot about where it was for about three hours..real stupid. well end result, very dehydrated whites tree frog, that perished due to my lapse of memory.....

[reptides]

I made a big boo boo.The first Red Tail Boa I had(and I loved it)kind of got sucked up in my vaccume cleaner.I was looking for the best way and fastest to clean the cage so I pushed the snake to one side and vaccumed,well I took my eye off the snake and I heard a grinding sound,ewwww.At the time I was thinking he was in the bag,so I pulled everything apart to look for him,then I noticed little,I mean little pieces of him all over the bag,he went through the fan and then into the bag which I realized.Trust me I take my time cleaning cages now!

[BOAS_N_PYTHONS]

JIMMYDAVID:

My biggest was on a feeding day. I took out 9 Brazilian Rainbow Boas and some 4 Blood Pythons, each were put in a feeding tub with a lid. Feed each one and walked away to see something on the computer I was getting from work and when I came back to put the boids back in their cages I noticed 1 BRB was missing. Turns out I did not close his lid 100% as I thought and I did not lock the feeding room. I knew he escaped and with a full belly so he was not going to be easy to find. He had 6 rooms to choose to hide and all had everything he can want to hide for a long time.

Well I went rampant trying to seek him out in each room, 4 of the rooms were for snakes and the other 2 were office and washroom. Office he was not in because I was there. Washroom was closed so not there either. So after turning over every cage and looking through storage areas of snake equipment I was baffled to find him no where.

Funny part is coming though. In my display room I have my book library and a few chairs as well as some nicnacks (sp). Well I got worried where he took off too and even made a small pray to find him. I have this statue I got in Cancun of an old Mayan Cheif represented by jungle snakes, the moment I looked up at it after my small pray - guess where the BRB was?

That' s right he was wrapped around the statue, how I missed that with a snake at 5 feet on a 1.5 foot statue who knows but maybe it was a sign :D

NOTE - I learned from that and still feed the same way but the room is closed if I leave the room. :D

Tony Pharosx

[clint545]

When I was about 10 my GrandFather found a Red Ear Slider by the road and gave it to me.
I kept it for about 4 months, in a 10 gallon tank, no heat no filter, in the basement by the sliding door! Needless to say the poor little guy didn't make it.
That was 20 years ago, when the only info you could find on Turtle care was to feed them raw hamburger and fish.

[gonesnakee]

I just discovered a big FU a few minutes ago. I recv. some Speckled Hognoses in trade last fall & read up on them & just put them down for brumation around 2 weeks ago. I had read that they could be brumated as normal Colubrids (55F). Obviosuly not as both were dead when I checked all the brumating snakes this afternoon. Unless something else is responsible (doubt it both were "cleaned out" & very healthy) I killed them by brumating them too cool %$#&^&&^*!!! Mark
P.S. POed MAJORLY!!! I should have trusted my orginal doubts on the temps!

[Ptindy]

double post

[Ptindy]

Well, I have a couple confessions. When me and my little sister were about 6 and 8, me being older, we received two RES as a gift from our aunt. We loved them. But the whole time we had them we didn't have a filter or a basking spot, just water, a reptile lagoon(shallow and open top) , and gravel. Well we bought a kritter keeper with some gravel from a garage sale and were so excited to see our turtles swim. The gravel ended up having salt all over it or was for salt water tanks, wasn't sure and my sister's turtle died. Mine survived. I kept him for about 6 more years the same way and he grew fairly large. I didn't realize I was supposed to do all this for him and he was growing and stuff so didn't realize there was a problem, his shell was kind soft though on the tummy. We ended up letting him go out at a beaver pond by my grandparents in ontario caues my mom wanted me to, i'm sure he died. On top of this, when I was in grade 5 or so I made an allowance for shovelling snow in the driveway. I saved up for a heat rock (bad) and two anoles that I saw at this neighborhood petstore. Well, buddy sold them to me and of course didn't make sure I left with everything I would need to keep them alive. All I had was a hot rock and a tank, they eventually died because I didn't have and UV lights and they were in a basement. I also tried to feed them mealies but they weren't having any of it, I don't even know if they will eat them now, but then again, they don't interest me so i'm not too worried about their care requirements. I also tried to sell frogs I found as a kid at my grandparents to kids on my street back in the city for a couple bucks haha, but I got busted and my mom drove them back out to let them go.

Mike

[beanersmysav]

blah I left the top off one of my corn snakes cage and haven't found her yet :-/ felt so stupid I just went down to get a pinky mouse and in 2 mins she was gone, no where to be found! I'm still devistated it happened a week ago. Been setting up all kinds of water and pinkie mice all over the house, have a feeling he got into the heating duct I have disconnected.

[reptiguy420]

Id have to say the worst thing ive done was leave the lid of one of my hatchling cresteds enclosures open while changing food and water.Leave for 2 sec. and surprise, surpise 1 less crested.Never did find that lil bugger.

[crazy4reptiles]

Well this doesn't really have anything to do with directly harming any of my reptiles... but it was still REALLY STUPID!!!! It was feeding day last Sun... So I put all the snakes in their containers to feed.... when I took my corn out of its tank I removed the heat lamp from on top... I have a T.V. sitting on the floor in my reptile room with a peice of glass on top of it.... so I set the light on the glass well I went to the sink to get my mice... It will be fine until I get back.... right... Well need less to say I FORGOT... until after my corn was done eating... So ya, I have a hole in the top of my T.V.... Wait a minute..acttually I'm an IDIOT!!! ... could have started the hole room on fire... So above where I said this didn't really have anything to do with harming anything.... I TAKE IT BACK..... :D

[Gary D.]

My biggest failure due to ignorance was back in the days when there wasn't a lot of info out there to begin with (286's weren't even on on the market yet, let alone good info sites). Well I kept a golden tegu in conditions that were sub par to say the least, and fed him table scraps and eggs. He eventually died of stomatis. I still feel racked with guilt knowing I could have done better for him even with the info that was available then. And with what I know now, it would have taken very little effort to change the biggest of shortcommings.

My more recent stupid errors are in not securing caging properly and having snakes escape.

GD

[Paleosuchus]

Made two mistakes so far and hopefully the last. First was on a herping trip, driving to the everglades i saw a Huge brown watersnake, measured 5' 1/4". We got to a fishing spot/herping spot and i left the brown watersnake in the truck. Needless to say the tempatures sky rocketed and it died. Only other killing was when i fed one of my first snakes two large of meal. Extremely large, and he tried to regurge and suffocated. Can always expect more mistakes just hope they are not lethal ones.

[nita]

The worst one was my first BP. She was a 15yr old adoption that was just wonderful, I had her in a 33Gal tank and was using ice cream buckets with holes cut into the lids for hides and she had been doing great. Usually she was out and cruising by 10pm or so and then one night she wasn't out, it was about 10:30 when I decided to check on her only to find out that where her tank was sitting was in direct sunlight during the day and she had overheated and died in her hide that day. I was devastated, how my DH managed to deal with me is beyond me but lets just say I am an emotional wreck over the loss of an animal, they are part of the family, and at the time Iwas 3 months pregnant so just make that emotional wreck to nth degree. I have since learned and ensure nobody ends up in the suns path.

[zero&stich]

Worst mistake, which caused me to seriousally rethink 'lamps' for anything, was nearly burning my house to the ground. Well one night, I was moving cages around and rearanging and whatnot. During my lapse, I thought I unplugged everything and had everything cooled down on top of the cages. I never rested my hand on the lamp to check to see if it was cool and promptly put it on my carpet, and went about my business and eventually left the room. During the middle of the night, I heard the alarms blazing throughout the house. I bolted back into the room, to smell that which of a decaying animal. I saw steam rise quickly up from the carpet as panic gripped my entire body. I quickly unplugged and shut down everything. When I lifted the lamp off the ground, there was a giant, gaping hole right down to the orginal framework of the house because I saw the wood under the carpet.

This accident has most definatly forced me to see the benifits of thermostats and that pads are definatly less of a fire hazard.

Let this be a lesson to the newer herpers. If you use heat lamps, you might as well stand in the middle of a bon fire. You are playin with a natural force.

Be careful.

[JonD]

Last year I had some friends over after the bar. I took out one of my not so friendly amazon tree boas. I brought it out and the thing tagged me in the forehead as well as a few other places..another time fell asleep when I my bci out. She just curled up next to me...I guess I've been lucky and relatively "incident free" so far..Knock on wood.

Great stories everyone!

[Jeff_Favelle]

Oh yeah, seen and done it all. Hot rocks, tape, screen lids, aquariums, feeding too large of an item, basking lamps for nocturnal snakes. Man o' man, I wonder how sometimes stuff actually lived. Its kind of sad in retrospect, but its promising how far we've come in such a short time (10 years).

Aas long as we learn to limit the mistakes, and don't make the SAME ones, we'll (and the snakes) will be all right.

[ChunkyMunky]

I bought a boa from a fish store :eek:

And even worse, I didnt know it had mites for about 4 months after I bought it. Haha, I didnt even know snake mites existed, untill I got on the internet and did some research. Just think of how stupid some of us would still be if there was no internet. :p

Dan.

[reptile boi]

A couple stupid mistakes i can remember was 1. I had a flat rock scorpion that i forgot to water for over 2 months, was still alive and kicking after all that so i told myself id water it the next day, went to water it the next day just to find it dead. 2. i left an adult, 5" long emp in a rubbermaid that was only 3" high without a lid thinking it would stay in there till i got a larger kritter keeper, well, next day it was gone. 3 years later and still no sign of it. Another was i gave a baby fattail scorp a water dish a little water dish thinking it would save any future scorps from dehydrating, well next day i found it dead in the water bowl, now i only spray desert scorps twice a week for moisture and i only give water dishes (small ones) for larger tropical scorps.


Thanks,
Ben

[Slannesh]

Several years ago mind you....

But decided my newish (several months) gold dusted day gecko could use a buddy, so I bought a green anole... no UV, no UTH, but the temps were about right thanks to my trusty heat lamp :) in a 'natural' terrarium complete with live plants that I haven't a clue if they were safe to keep them with or not

Fed them every other day... so unfortunately they both took a very long time to die :( I still feel really bad for the poor little buggers. I know better now anyhow.

[HeatherRose]

Hmm...

In grade 7 my friends and I used to buy guppies at the petstore, put them in babyfood jars (full of water with air holes) and keep them in our desks until we brought them home and put them in our fish tanks.

I caught a frog in my pool once, and kept it in a drawer under my bed for a night. It escaped, and hopped into my little sister's room. My mom never believed her that a frog had happened along into her room in the middle of the night, scaring the crap out of her. I found it the next morning and let it go outside :p

Although, I can never remember NOT fully researching anything before I got it, even those little guppies.

Maybe I'm just a nerd. Same with herps, even my very first one, researched to the fullest before I ordered it online and it was shipped to my door. Probably the dumbest thing there, was attempting to feed it those freeze-dried crickets from PetSmart. (It was a crested gecko, I figured it would work for some reason.)

Other than that, my biggest mistake was probably my 'free roaming' ball python. He escaped often, and was a repeat offender. I finally fixed his enclosure :p

[justinO]

I once bought an albino leopard gecko and it escaped in the car on the way home. when i got home i freaked out looking for it and i finially found it. i had stepped on it in my frenzy looking for it.

also had a snake escape in a car (hole in the snake bag) it took a few hours and a completely dismantled dashboard to get it out.
when i was much younger, I kept multiple small lizard species together on corn-cob substrate. 3 lizards died from what I can assume to be impaction. I bought them from a fish store as well.



now all herps are double contained when in transport. on the odd time I transport venomous, they get triple contained.

of all the things i've learned in the last 8 years, its been to research the animal either before you get it.

[Linds]

Originally posted by RMBolton
Ditto! Used hot-rocks too *shudders* That was about 11 years ago now (no internet access, no literature - that I could find).

LOL not that literature necessarily can help you out of that! I'm lucky my iguana lived as long as she did (20 years), and I attribute it mostly to her summers outdoors. We got her when I was 3 or 4 years old, complete with a book on iguanas. We kept her with a hot rock on corn cob and fed her mostly carrots and romaine lettuce supplemented with vitamin powder and bird gravel (hey, the book told us they needed it to digest their food :rolleyes: ) until she had a good case of MBD. We took her to the vet, who contacted the Toronto or Buffalo zoo (I can't remember which one, I was so young), where they told us she needed to be fed either dog food or monkey biscuits :rolleyes: She was fed that for quite a length of time, and it wasn't until the internet years that she finally received the proper care :( That being said, books STILL aren't always reliable, the last one I ruffled through was on monitors, claiming they needed to be kept with an 80-90 gradient :eek:

[Nicky]

Hmmm lets see..... a year ago when I had my frogs, they had come down with red leg so I put them in a rubbermaid to use to transport them to the vets office and left the room to check some things, when I came back I saw the lide slightly off and one less frog. After 2 hours of searching I found him behind the t.v, luckly he was still alive.

[ChokeOnSmoke]

My first and worst mistake was an impulse buy from an awful pet store. It was a hybrid or inbred rat/corn snake of some kind. Wasn't feeding and had an old shed or two stuck on it. Well I ended up after much research getting the sheds off but had to force feed the poor little thing about three times. I'm sure it was more stressful for the snake but it was damn stressful on me as well. It almost turned me off of the hobby...... almost.... then I found this site bought a snake from a reputable breeder and all was good. You live and learn too bad sometimes its at the expense of a living creature.
Good thread

[Bristen]

I'm going to be 31 years old in a few weeks and I've been keeping some herps (here and there) for about 20 years... As previously mentionned multiple times, information was not readily available years ago like it is today.. not at all... This meant more mistakes were being done. At local petshops here (the only source for herps other than wild caught at the time) did not have much litterature. And let's be very honest, some of those older "pet shop" books were not that great to begin with!

I used to keep my boa with a 100W light bulb on all night... bizarely, it never struck my mind that it's a nocturnal animal and that bulb would be producing light 24/7...? Also the unprotected heat lamp in enclosure thinking my boa was going to be "smart" enough not to get burnt on it (was a bad burn, but she got a full recovery though)... I also used toxic glues in an enclosure and this resulted in my baby snow corn snake dying of liver failure and it's central nervous system being completely shot (not pretty!!)...

However, this next one is by far the worst one...

This was about 17 years ago (I was 14 at the time I think). I had 4 large red-eared sliders that I kept in a large aquarium with power filter (only water, no gravel, no basking spot, etc)... I was feeding them cat food which is what a local "expert" and owner of a reptile zoo told me to feed them :( A friend of mine caught a large wood turtle and gave it to me.. I stupidly put the wood turtle with the RES! but it gets worst... Activities in high school kept me very busy so I was not able to "care" for the turtles anymore.. so, yup you guessed it.. I let the wood turtle go in the woods in our back yard *shudder*... but it gets much worst... I haven't had turtles since, so I don't know exactly what their problem was (I'm guessing there could of been something wrong with the well water, the diet was horrible, and no sunlight for calcium absorption?).. anyways, the shells were disintegrating<sp?>... this condition ended up creating holes in their shells, and one even had a hole in his jaw... so me thinking this was some incurable disease (because the local "expert" didn't know what it was), I decided that I would rather euthanize them than watch them die slowly... we had the "bright idea" of gasing them with carbon monoxide. So I started my dad's truck, placed the turtles in a cardboard box with a hole in it and stuck the truck's tail pipe in the box... how did I not think of how long turtles hold their breath under water is beyond me... I had seen them sleep in the bottom of the aquarium (under water) before...? the poor turtles died only after a long hour in that box... I checked on them after 15 minutes and I saw them gasping for air... I think they died of actually being cooked alive rather than the original intent of gassing them... I'll never forget them :(

On a positive note, I second what Jeff said.. as long as we reduce the mistakes and not repeat the same ones. I would have to say though, that people don't have as many excuses today as they used to... we are all much less ignorant of how to keep herps nowadays. There's a LOT of information available for all those that want to RESEARCH how to keep the animals that interest them BEFORE they get them at their house.

Excellent thread!

Retreating in shame,
Bristen.

[loveispretend]

I'm actually amazed that my herps have not had to pay a terrible price for my stupidity, especially early on. Some examples:
As a young kid, I would gather a crop of wc kings, garters, etc. every summer. When it was feeding time, I would drop live, fully conscious rodents in with them, and then wander off, often leaving the mouse in for days until it was finally eaten. When I was cleaning cages everything (including large king snakes) would get dumped in a box together until I was all done. To this day I don't understand why, but luckily none of those poor snakes was ever eaten by a rodent or a bigger snake.
When I was a young teenager, I was lazy and tossed my jacket on the dresser by one of my bp's tanks and left the house for several hours. My careless toss actually twisted the heat lamp so that it was flush against the glass. When I came home hours later, the heat had warped the lid and shattered the glass, and the snake was nowhere to be seen. Once again, dumb luck prevented anything major from happening. I found my bp soon after, amazingly free of burns and cuts.
The dumbest mistake I made that did have an ill effect on a snake was this... when I was about 14, I had a gopher snake that was doing miserably, and I just could not figure out why for the longest time. I played around with food, heat, etc. for months, before figuring out that MAYBE it was a bad idea to keep a snake tank about 3 inches in front of a huge floor speaker that I blared ridiculously loud and pounding music from for hours every day. Thankfully, the poor thing recovered very quickly once he had some peace.

[sapphire_moon]

years ago, before *I* had the internet, and books weren't that helpfull. I had an iguana, that as it got older (with me it actually got to about 3ft with tail) got very mean (kitty used to like to sit and stare at it, and bat at the glass...oh and it was in a tank, no uv, lettuce, crickets..etc..etc.. all the bad iggy mistakes) luckily someone came that had other iggies, and within a week we got pics of it (Free roaming) a house, and sitting there watching t.v being petted like a dog.


Same mistake with the anoles, the made great earrings though, lol.

hot rocks, heat lamps (for non daytime herps) those "water frogs", turtles. I once had a box turtle that was WC fed hamburger and lettuce, I had it until winter when one day it didn't come out of it's shell. I now realize it was probably hibernating since it was WC and obciously much older......we gave it the "garbage bag burial" :(

and with my snakes, before I could get the book and before I started on here, 20 L tank, newspaper (though thats not bad) and a water bowl, nothing to control the heat, and thats it, amazingly he always ate great, and I had him for about 3-3.5 years.

I had to give him up because I didn't have my lease signed and had to choose between my snakes/ breeder rats/breeder mice and a place to live.

we decided to keep the hognose because he was the smallest and easiest to hide. It was hard to let our corn go though because she was an anniversary present from me to my partner.
:(
but we will again one day get more snakes, and I will have the beautiful black blood I want. And maybe get back into bp's.

[justinO]

for me, and I still feel horrible about it, when I was 10 I got a pair of turtles from the pet store.... I bought them all the best stuff, food, accesories, everything....... no one told me I had to HEAT them!
So in the summer, they were fine (by the window)... but in the winter they went into hybernation and never came out! I found out years later that with a simple light/heat, they would have been just fine. Stupid pet store.

Jessy

[dave68]

here's a funny mistake (well not funny for mr but Dave got a kick out of it) We made the mistake bought 12 live full grown mice and stopped in quickly to visit someone in the hospital not thinking to check on the mice when we got in the car to leave. Well we were driving for about 10 mins and all of a sudden I felt something in my pant leg climbing higher and higher, I was like Dave I think theres a bug in my pants or something, and All of a sudden remembered oh s*@* the mice, sure enought the mice had chewed out of the box and one was venturing up my pant leg, I hate mice and Dave got quite the laugh out of it!!!!!! We had a 40 min drive and did not find all of them what a long nerve racking drive that was!!LOL!!!
Allison

[daiyoukai]

this has happend a few times. I'll take a ball python out to show people who have stoped by my house, smoke alil something and become simi intoxicated and totaly forget the snake was sitting right next to me 5 mins befor.
Then about an hour later when I coem to my senses I'll look over and see that I FORGOT WHERE MY PYTHON WENT! but I keep my door closed so it's always a matter of just finding her. one day I was sitting at my computer just as I am now and feel this cool lumb run across my foot and sure enough it was my ball python healthy as ever stoping by to say "whats up"


another was a few years ago I was called by a friend to take care of a black snake that was living under there steps. I found the snake and it had to have been close to 7 feet long. IT WAS A HUGE black snake. so I put a rake over it's neck like Iv seen steve erwin do and picked him up by the neck and rear. thats when all the kids that were swiming in the pond on the property came by to see and they must have spooked that snake pretty bad because it just fliped out! it eventualy got loose from my hand and went into the pond where all the ******* kids procedded to beat it to death with sticks. If it were my property I would have slaped the **** out of all of them but teh parents of the kids showed no interest that their children just murdered a harmless non venomous snake thats soul reason of living upto this point was to eat the rats that had (once) plagued there farm house. I felt responsible for the snakes death and now know I could have caused less of a scene and got the snake relocated without it having been stressed and beaten to death.

-Edited for profanity-Heather

[Orianna]

well I've got one confession. I live in Orlando while I go to school but my husband and friends live in Ft Lauderdale. He has our 8 KSBs and I have our BRB. When I first moved up here I would take Red home with me. I always traveled at night after work. But this one time in may I went home during the day. Red travels in her feed container which is a plastic herp cage. She fried on the way down there. To make it a bit worse I was to feed her at the shop down there when I arrived. I went and got her a rat and held it above her head. That is when I noticed she wasn't moving or smelling or breathing. Right there at the counter in a reptile shop that I was a regular for yrs at. I was so heart broken that I had killed her. My husband was called for me to tell him what happened and that I was in condition to talk or drive. He had to come and get me. Before he took me home though he made me pic out a new baby BRB and bought it for me. Some crap about get back in the saddle when your thrown off. Well Chesnut is doing great.
p.s. I had a taxidermist skin Red so I could keep her and have a constant reminder to never do anything like that again.