Well, I woke up this morning and looked in Frank's tank to see him hanging from a piece of cardboard that I used to isolate the vibrations made by the ballast in the lamps from the tank. I thought it was a funny position for him to be hanging in so I took a picture. Soon after I realized he wasn't hanging out there because he wanted to and that he was stuck to the cardboard somehow.
I took the lid off and quickly unscrewed the lamp and cut away the cardboard that he was stuck too. He gave a bit of a struggle at first but when he realized I was getting him loose he calmed down. He was stuck pretty good in two places, so I had my roommate cut the cardboard so he couldn't try to rip himself off of it. I soaked him in a bowl of water for a while but the adhesive seemed to be waterproof so that didn't do anything. I then remembered seeing pictures of this snake trap a long time ago and remembered that they used PAM to release the adhesive:
I didn't have any PAM, so I just poured some olive oil in a dish and used a q-tip to soak the cardboard.
After about 5 minutes I tried giving the cardboard a little pull and it just fell right off, and I was left with one slippery snake!
I'm kicking myself for not noticing the adhesive on the cardboard before I put it in his tank but there isn't much I can do about that now. I just thought I'd post this up to remind people that snakes and tape don't mix, and to show that cooking oil works wonders at releasing adhesives!
Threaded Mode