need serious help

my 3ft. Columbian red tailed boa got loose about 3 days ago. hes good at sneaking off when I'm not looking so it didn't bother me. but today i found him and he was a little cold so i put him around my neck to help warm him up and then he bite me on the back of my neck( which is unusual since he has never bitten me before). so i quickly took him off and started to feel his body to see if he swallowed anything that might make him irritated. and he is sort of stiff from about 1.5 feet from his head to about .5ft from the tip f his tail. i felt his underbelly and he let out this big wheeze and bite me again. so i put him in a separate cage and put a lamp on it and now hes been staring at me and wagging his tail like a rattlesnake for about 10 mins now. hes never shown any aggression to me before and now hes like a rattlesnake. all coiled up and ready to strike

Wow. There are lots of things that could have happened while he was out. He might just be sore from the 3 days of exploration exercise and cold temps.

He may be aggravated being cold - he is probably thinking in "slow motion" so you picking him up probably felt like a whirlwind to him. When we got our first boa, he was shipped, and the carrier sent him to the wrong zip code (Arkansas or something instead of Buffalo NY!), so he was a day late. He was very cool when my husband unpacked him - and the FIRST AND ONLY TIME he ever tried to bite was when my husband took him out of the snake bag after opening the box.

Let him calm down and warm up some (maybe a lukewarm bath?) - if he still seems stiff in a day or two of warming back up, I'd say take him to the vet to make sure he didn't ingest anything.

Seeing a huge warm thing come at him after days of being cool probably just scared him a bit and put him on the defensive. He'll probably go back to normal after he's warmed up in his home cage again.

i didnt notice before but i think his lower jaw is swollen. it just looke dlike some loose skin but now it looks bigger and i think it is swollen. i think he did ingest something because he is a little bit fatter then when he went missing

i didnt notice before but i think his lower jaw is swollen. it just looke dlike some loose skin but now it looks bigger and i think it is swollen. i think he did ingest something because he is a little bit fatter then when he went missing. i'm taking him to vet when i can find 1 that works with exotice pets(not very many exotic pets in oregon so not very many exotic pet vets here).

Sometimes when snakes get respiratory infections their throats start to swell a little. If you do really think he ate something, getting him to a vet should be a priority since it could be anything from a normal mouse, to a mouse that had access to poison someplace, or an object that might block his digestive tract or tear his intestine. Try www.herpvetconnection.com to help find a vet. I hope he gets well!

ty liquidleaf i got him a appointment at the vets on march 3 about aroud 8 am. (it was the earliest 1 i could schedule) i know it wasnt a mouse, if he did swollow something then it was something hard not like a mouse.

the swelling in his belly could be from not having enough heat to digest so it just festers in there