Rescue

[Abraxxos]

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.

[Mark Taylor]

Nice to see them getting better shame they even got in that state.

[Abraxxos]

Baby




Time stamped pictures of Baby's birth. We really didn't believe him when he said the snake was a year old... but then he told us his facebook and we found these.


Remember I said one of our friends had just had babies a month prior to us finding this snake? On the left is the snake from my friends clutch. On the right is Baby. A snake who is a year older. :|

Pictures of Baby now. Taken today and the day before.

[Abraxxos]

Monty
These first few are of him enjoying some time stretching out in the grass. As you can see, he's going back into shed again. Bit of a surprise being as he just finished his last shed barely a week ago, but if he so feels the need.... we'll continue watching him closely.





And these are from Monty's meal today.

[Abraxxos]

Justice



It's a twig, it's a stick, it's a snake!




Monty and Justice curled up together. They have their separate enclosures, but they throw fits when they aren't with each other. We noticed that when they were in separate enclosures they kept being restless and trying to get out of the cages and into the opposite cage. One day while cleaning Monty's cage he got out and went wrapping around Justice's enclosure trying to get to her. When allowed, they are inseparable.

And this was a heron who did not approve of us having snakes out that were being than she was.

[Abraxxos]

Jewel

So now for Jewel's story. Only a few days after bringing Monty, Justice and Baby home, a friend of mine came to me with another BCI. The snake had been surrendered to her without much notice and she asked me to take the snake. As annoyed as I was about the situation, I took her because I knew that otherwise the snake might not be in the best of hands - my friend said she really just didn't have the room or the money for a big snake. Her previous owners were apparently fervent smokers of pot and had named the snake Cannabis (Not a name I will accept. She has a shape on her head resembling an indian bindi so.. Jewel it is). When we received her, we were told she didn't eat frequently and was often a picky eater. (From my experience, no, she really isn't). We also noted she had a rather nasty RI, complete with bubbles out of her mouth and nose (and cured it). Unfortunately, nobody we have spoken to has any clue about her most prevalent problem (which thankfully is backing off now that she is home with me):

Jewel has seizures.

We were not warned, but the night after bringing her home she had an incident and she wound up having 3 seizures that week. They have lessened in frequency significantly and a seizure has not been noted for at least 2 weeks now. The only thing we know to cause seizures is overdoing mite spray but... she hadn't been sprayed with mite spray and whatever the cause, it was something that had happened in her previous home (that of which we still really haven't figured out) however she does hugely freak out while being picked up. She's fine once you're holding her and she's secure, but in the time of being picked up she is hugely uncomfortable and we suspect she has likely been dropped. We usually just let her come out of her enclosure on her own now - she's nowhere near so jumpy when picked up outside of the enclosure. Not sure if anybody else here has had this problem, but considering there is no smoke here and there was an over-abundance of smoke in her old home and a lessening of seizures here but seizures there... Perhaps the seizures are smoke induced?

We also noted she has some facial scarring much like Monty... what we suspect was previous mouth rot.

Unfortunately we forgot to take her out today, so we didn't get any nice outside pictures today like the rest - we'd already fed her by the time we remembered, and we weren't about to take her out after she'd eaten. We don't have an exact measurement on her size, but she's between Justice and Monty's size, so we're figuring around 7 to 7 1/2 feet.





Look, I'm doing my best monitor lizard impersonation! XD

A cleared shot of her facial injuries. Y'know, without a rat in the way.

[Terranaut]

You guys are doing fantastic with these. I love it when people do the rigjt thing. Please...now that you have come out and told us about these guys please update often. Keep the pics coming. Use the same background every week and take the same shot so we can see them improving. Those poor boas. Glad you guys have them now.

[Amadeus]

Kudos for helping these poor animals.

[Chu'Wuti]

I would be very concerned about these snakes having IBD--Inclusion Body Disease. Have you taken them to a vet? A blood test could rule out IBD (or confirm it).

Inclusion Body Disease

http://www.vet.purdue.edu/vth/files/...%20Pythons.pdf

I hope my suspicion is unfounded . . . :-(

[smy_749]

I didn't want to be a debby downer as I do appreciate what your doing, but I was going to say the same as Chu' when I saw the pic of 'Baby' on top of one of your pets. You may want to keep them separate for a while, unless its been a while and your just updating us now, in which case I apologize.

[Abraxxos]

Originally Posted by smy_749

I didn't want to be a debby downer as I do appreciate what your doing, but I was going to say the same as Chu' when I saw the pic of 'Baby' on top of one of your pets. You may want to keep them separate for a while, unless its been a while and your just updating us now, in which case I apologize.

Originally Posted by Terranaut

You guys are doing fantastic with these. I love it when people do the rigjt thing. Please...now that you have come out and told us about these guys please update often. Keep the pics coming. Use the same background every week and take the same shot so we can see them improving. Those poor boas. Glad you guys have them now.

Yeah we're just now making a post about them. We've had them for a while but didn't want to post anything in fear that they were just going to die. So now that every one of them is making progress we decided to finally make a post.

[Chu'Wuti]

Have you taken them to a vet and had blood tests done for IBD?

[Amadeus]

Originally Posted by Chu'Wuti

Have you taken them to a vet and had blood tests done for IBD?

What makes you think they have IBD?

Have you taken yours for blood tests?

[Chu'Wuti]

Amadeus, the symptoms that have been reported for these snakes are commensurate with IBD. That's why I ask. I posted a couple of links to information about IBD earlier that you might read for more information.

None of mine--not those I've bought, nor those I've rescued--have ever displayed any of those symptoms, so I've never had them tested. If they were displaying symptoms like these, I would, especially if they were rescues, as I wouldn't want to risk my own snakes.

I also quarantine new snakes, whether rescues or not, for a minimum of three months, usually longer, and I would NEVER put a new, sick, and/or underweight snake with one of mine to take pictures, as I wouldn't want to risk my snakes getting something I don't yet know about. That's just common sense.

[Amadeus]

You have a subtle patronizing attitude.

Ik what ibd is and I have seen it first hand. She should look for stargazing and or writhing.