Amazing Lost Snake Found story

My newest hatchling escaped. He's an anery A zigzag from Don and Angela Gallagher. I kept him in a 20 qt Sterilite. He's so small and there is so much for him to hide in I was discouraged. I even said a prayer about it. No sign of him for 11 days.

Today is feeding day. As is my routine I selected out meals of assorted sizes for each snakes meal. I thaw the whole lot of them in one plastic food storage tub. Usually I do the quick thaw with hot water method. I did not do that today. Instead, I decided to put the tub over a heat mat and let them thaw over the course of a few hours.

2.5 hours later I go to check on the progress. Initially I see something that freaks me out. There is a dark, sinewy object in the tub! WT...? So, I look closer only to find that I am looking at the belly checkers of a very small snake. Guess who?

He had to have been close by. He must have smelled the thawing rodents. He must have found a gap in the lid and crawled in. So there he is on top of the carcasses. I remove the lid and dang if he doesn't have a noticable bulge mid body. The little bugger picked out a mouse of the appropriate size and scarfed it down! Mind you there were many adult, large and small fuzzies and large pinks in this container. The smallest ones on the bottom. Amazing!

Now for a little bit of down side. The thaw process was not yet complete. I hope that the one he ate was completely thawed. Remember I had put the smallest feeders on the bottom closest to the heat. This meal is also bigger than he had been getting, but obviously not too big. I'll be watching and hoping against a regurg.

I put him back into his tub and taped the entire outside edge of the lid with 2" blue painters tape. It can stay like this for the time being until I get a more secure container for him.

I think I really like this snake.

Out of 12 snakes I have only lost one permanently. My first kingsnake escaped and was found 5 times. S/he is a challenge in more ways than one. So, anyone who has recently had a snake escape. Stay encouraged!

Happy endings. They do happen to real people.

Wow what a neat story.

I had 2 baby escapees this season. the first was one of my JC/D Xs...one of the two I decided to hold back. I had been moving things around and had a stack of shoeboxes - right up til the point I moved one of the big containers. The whole stack of little ones tumbled. I thought I had rounded them all up, til I noticed her box on an unused shelf the next morning. I turned the place upside down, then did it again a week later. 2 weeks after that, I came home from work to find her curled up on the window ledge in the kitchen. My thought was - How the heck did you get way up there???
The other was a baby bp. Some of the group were still temperamental feeders, so I was stacking them as I fed them and leaving them to eat. I came back about an hour later, and the 3rd one down was gone. searched the room to no avail (how do they do that???) repeated the search the following day - nothing. The day after that, about an hour after I had finished my morning snake chores (including soaking bloods in the tub) and gone to bed, I woke up to hear my wife rushing toward me saying omigod, omigod, omigod, omigod, omigod, omigod, omigod, omigod, omigod (lol - can ya tell she still isn't a big fan?). "There's a snake in the tub...YOU LEFT A SNAKE IN THE TUB" Apparently, she was about to get in the shower when she saw a snake. This whole thing was dragging me out of a nice sleep, and the way she was carrying on, I really thought I had fallen asleep with one of the big bloods sitting in there (I can be pretty stupid in the morning). I dutifully got up and went to investigate, and there was the baby ball sitting in the middle of the tub, and I thought "oh good, its just you" followed immediately by "how the heck did you get in there???" That one cost me about $125 for a butt ugly pair of shoes that my wife wanted. **shrugs**