This is pretty cool. The story first appeared on HerpVet's Facebook page last week (which is a great page to follow if you're on Facebook), and then MSN picked it up.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/...his/ar-BBNwdfc
A green tree python named Toothless was rushed to the vet after she broke a part of her jawbone during a meal.
After an x-ray revealed a broken jawbone, too small to mend using traditional surgery, doctors decided to craft her ‘braces.’
The ‘braces’ were made using a pink paperclip crafted into an external brace and affixed to Toothless’ scales using super glue.
A green tree python named Toothless recently broke a part of her jawbone while eating.
According to a Facebook post from HerpVet, an animal hospital in Mount Ommaney, Australia, specializing in reptiles, Toothless was in the middle of enjoying her dinner when "Somehow, during the swallowing process her left lower jawbone folded and got stuck on her throat."
The python was left with an overbite and a resemblance to a vaguely perturbed Muppet. Seeing their animal in distress, Toothless’s owners rushed her to the hospital where an X-ray revealed a break in her jawbone.
Surgery would have been risky, as the bone was too small and fragile to mend using traditional methods. So doctors came up with a truly visionary solution: Braces. Snake braces.
The veterinarians realigned Toothless’ jaw and used a paperclip to craft an external brace, affixing it to her scales using a non-toxic super glue. It fell off the next day but was reapplied. This time, it stayed on “until she shed and this was long enough to allow her to heal,” wrote HerpVet.
Doctors also posited that the python broke her jaw in the first place because she’d recently laid eggs, which weakened her jaw and made her mandible bones more susceptible to fracturing.
"She was given pain relief and placed on a calcium supplement to aid in the healing process," the doctors explained. "Food will be withheld for a couple of weeks at which point a final x-ray will be taken to confirm healing has completed."
Here is Toothless, all healed up at her final checkup, with “only a single damaged scale to show anything ever happened.”
"Thank you so much for fixing my Toothless up!" owner Bo Marsh commented on HerpVet’s Facebook post. "She’s feeling much better and constantly begging me for food. She’s gonna have to wait a bit longer!"
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