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Sad... our GTP died today.

liquidleaf

liquidleaf

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Came home from dinner (where our car was hit in the parking lot by someone backing out!) to find our GTP Kagome near the door, on the floor of her cage. Strange position for her, she normally pokes towards the door when she's hungry, but always when up on her perch.

... My husband noticed that she wasn't moving - she had died sometime today or early this morning (we leave for work at 5am). Temps were fine in her cage. She hadn't eaten for about 3 weeks (we feed her every 2 weeks, and the last scheduled feeding, she was shedding and wouldn't eat).

I'm taking her in for a necropsy tomorrow - she looks fine. I'm not sure what time she died, but her neck area is at a strange angle, and very stiff, but her body isn't stiff. Her body doesn't have any swollen areas. Cage temps were normal. No mucous or anything else. Because of the angle of her neck, I'm wondering if she might have struck her cage door hard (she often would do that at night if anything passed her cage, even shadows, she was a very easy to feed snake and had a monstrous feeding response). Has anyone ever had this happen?

My husband is so depressed - this was the snake he got at the PIJAC benefit auction at NARBC Chicago two years ago, a sorong-type bred by Reptiles by Mack.

This sucks -the second snake we've lost this year. The other was a female Hog Island boa who died of an intestinal abscess from a telescoped intestine. The necropsy will tell for certain... It's a horrible feeling to realize that a pet isn't moving and has passed away.

BLAH. :bawling:
 
Here's a pic of her from June 11th this year.

kagome-6-11-07.jpg
 
No pictures of her passed away. My husband was pretty upset, so I just bagged her and put her in the fridge. I might try to take a photo tomorrow before I take her to the vet. :(

Gah - that picture reminds me of how she would "write" in the mist on her cage door after a good spraying, nosing around.
 
*hugs* i am so sorry.... :(

I just hope that you can find out what went wrong, if anything to ease your minds about what happened. i have no doubts you did everything 100% right for her... <3
 
Here are some pics of her I took just now. She was hard to stretch out after being in the fridge. She had only partially completed her last shed (typically one out of four sheds she'd do a partial like this, and need a good bath to complete it, I believe because all the perches in her cage are fairly smooth). Her belly didn't feel like it was hard with any obstructions. We'll see what the vet says, but does her neck look funny to you? Maybe snakes that have died stiffen up in their neck region moreso than in the rest of their bodies, or maybe it was because she was lying in that position for a while before we got home, but the angle is weird.

The only thing I can think of that changed husbandry wise, was that two months ago my husband started using bottled drinking water (from our water cooler) to spray her down instead of our house's well water. And that IMPROVED her last shed (our well water is hard) - which is why the 6/11 picture looks so nice.

Bottom shot:
kagome-7-26-07-b.jpg


Overhead:
kagome-7-26-07-a.jpg
 
Truly sorry for your and your husbands loss..... I'd have to agree that the neck angle does seem off, even after death.
 
Terribly sorry to hear of your loss. We have all been there at one time(or sometimes a few). It's never easy. I know for me it always makes it worse when you talk about it to non-herp people, they just dont get it. They can become like a part of the family in a way, and such a part of your daily routine. Hopefully the necropsy will provide you with some kind of answer as to what went wrong. Again, sorry to hear about such a loss!! Dan M.
 
Well, that's the good thing - we DIDN'T lose the kitty! Just the two snakes now. He (Vash the cat) pulled through, though the vet was amazed, given the amount of fluid in the poor cat's lungs when we brought him in. He's causing his fair share of trouble ;)
 
Well, the vet got back to me with the results of the necropsy. He said that the GTP had bacterial pneumonia, and that her ovaries had shown signs of recent activity, but otherwise her fat reserves and everything else was good.

He said the neck position was most likely due to difficulty breathing.

:( Very sad - the puzzling thing is that everything I've found says that pneumonia is caused by "stress, cold, and high humidity". Her cage temperatures had been normal (if anything, slightly high on the days when it was very hot in Buffalo a few weeks back, but nothing crazy, maybe 93 at the top of her cage on the warmest days). Gradient of 90 at the ceiling where the heat cable is (thermostat controlled), down to about 80 at the floor normally, two perches at different heights. The humidity in her cage was normal as well, misted down every morning and occassionally before bedtime. She hadn't been wheezing or popping during normal checks, but she hides her head when we open the door to mist her, and she had been staying on the cage floor, but she normally did that while in shed (the back corner of her cage had a little area blocked with hanging plants with sphagnum moss on the floor on that part for when she was in shed, and that's where she was hanging out - the rest of the floor was covered by carefresh, which would dry out between sprayings). There were hanging plastic plants all around her cage to let her "hide" either on parts of the perches or on the floor behind them.

I wonder if she started ovulating and that might have stressed her. She had never been with a male, but was approaching breeding age (she was about 3 1/2). The only other thing I can think of would be that the last couple of times she fed, she grabbed the feeder and fell into her water dish while wrapping and 'killing' it (f/t though), not sure if she could have inhaled water... who knows.

Arg! I always think there would have been more I could have done had I noticed something out of the ordinary... but it's harder with a snake that isn't handled. My husband liked her as a display pet and was content to watch her and not handle her.

Poor girl... :(
 
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