TRIGGER WARNING
This is a thread about rescues. I've already made a thread about Sulu a ball python I rescued a while back in the general python forums. This will be the story of 4 boas whom I rescued all about the same time. 3 of them related.
I had been making plans to upgrade Sulu and Shelly, my milksnake, to larger enclosures. Craigslist is a great place to hunt for enclosures at great prices and within a few pages we found a group of 55 gallon aquariums - 3 for 100$. We had no use for the 3rd tank but we took it anyways. You never know.
So we go to this guys place to go pickup these aquariums and while we're talking about the aquariums he asks us what we're going to put in them and we mention we have snakes. He then asks what type of snakes and in my list I mentioned Radio, my year and a half old BCI. At this point he gets really excited and wants to show us his snakes (also BCIs)
He readily admits that he has fallen on hard times, and has not been taking care of the snakes like he used to. He had three snakes. One 8 1/2 ft male, one 6 1/2 ft female, and one (what I thought was) a neonate from the one litter he had had from the two larger snakes. All three are very underweight (pyramid-ing, wrinkled skin, dull colors). He says the neonate was actually born July 2012, making this snake nearly a year old. By comparison, a local pet store had a clutch of BCIs born almost a month ago - those babies are already the same length, and fatter. The 10-11 month old snake was just skin and bones, ribs were visible. The guy stated the last time the youngest snake was fed was two months ago... he thinks. I think it must have been longer ago than that, because I've seen snakes go more than two months without losing anywhere near that kind of weight. He was keeping their tanks on the front porch of his house - we live in Florida, I know our summers are nice and warm, but our winters, while mild are still much too cold for BCI's, and our humidity is not consistently where a BCI's should be. He clearly had the heat lamps and pads, but says he hasn't been using them to save money on his power bill.
So I pay him for the tanks and he goes ahead and gives me the baby since I already have a BCI.
We took her home and cleaned out her tank, gave her water and a hide as well as slapping a UTH on the bottom of it. Thawed out a pair of fuzzies and she practically inhaled them. Baby, as we have named her (We were trying to go for something else but we kept referring to her as baby and well.. the name stuck) has actually made a lot of progress and as far as having hugely horribly stunted growth she has put on weight. She's gone through 2 full healthy sheds and eaten several meals.
Here's a picture of Baby up against Radio, a snake with only a few months of age between them...
Luckily, I had some spare 6x3x3 enclosures from another great craigslist deal when I was buying an enclosure in preparation for my JCP. After getting the spares ready, I went back a week later for the parents.
Here is Monty
Here is his face...
Here is him gasping for air...
The man that we got Monty from was not Monty's first owner (or so he says) He claims that Monty had been kept previously in a wire cage, got facial injuries and developed mouth rot. He then supposedly saved the snake from this mouth rot. Really you never know what is an isn't a lie and considering the conditions the snake was in I'm not going to put a bunch of faith into what he says. So he has prominent facial disfigurment and scars. His nares are no longer intact and has to open his mouth to breath, everyonce in a while opening his mouth in a sort of yawn. He had an RI but it has since been cured. For quite a while he refused food but have gotten him to eat 2-3 nice meals now. He's an absolute sweetheart and is very insistent on being held. If the enclosure is opened if you don't move away in about a minute he'll be curling up on you.
Here is Justice
She isn't in as bad of condition as Monty or as stunted as Baby but she is still skinny. She had an RI (now cured) when we brought her home and has some obvious past rub injuries on her nose but overall is probably the second best looking of the 3. Not only has she eaten she has proven to be quite a glutton and had a perfect shed and loves to soak (Monty however loathes soaks and will do anything within his power to escape the bath tub).
As I'm out of pictures I can put in this post, the next several posts will contain a better break down of the individual snakes and more pics of each.
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