~Just Curious~
Gotta ask!
I know that nine times out of ten, a stuck animal will unstick itself just fine if you leave it be and you can actually make it worse by trying to force it. It got itself there, so it can get itself out - but this isn't always the case.
I'm just reminding everyone to be careful with "hoops, loops, and holes" in their enclosures that could potentially cause an animal to get stuck, in particular ones that might work fine as a tunnel for a younger animal, but then start getting too tight for comfort as they grow up. It was an obvious rule I've always been aware of in the back of my mind, but for some reason I never noticed the problem right under my own nose until yesterday. *bangs head on wall*
I use coconut shell hides for my young western hognoses and some of them naturally have small holes on top. I've seen hatchlings emerge from these like lil' scaly periscopes, they can slide all the way through easily, and larger ones will often stick their pointy noses out through it, unable to fit anything more out. All was good until my beloved Evan's "hypo" girl, Polly, hit that awkward subadult size of about a hundred grams, yet remained in denial of her recent weight gain and believed she could still squeeze herself through if she just sucked it in. (I think we've all been there before right?)
It went about as well as you'd imagine.
She was stuck upside down when I found her, she had flipped over the hide and also her water dish with what must have been earlier flailing. All of the aspen shavings on one side of her tub had been completely displaced from her struggles.
What really makes this worse is the unfortunate timing of it all - I had been volunteering with the Southern California Herpetology Association & Rescue all that weekend and because of the potential contagions from the sick rescue animals, I'd made it a personal rule to not enter my reptile room until the day after and a thorough shower/change of clothes. Because of that, I'm not entirely sure when my poor girl got stuck. She could have possibly been like that for over an entire day!
I apologize in advance for the crappy pictures, I'm not that camera-savvy, but I hope you can see that she was quite stuck - she actually swelled up a lot from the trauma there which just compounded the problem.
I know it's hard to discern in these photos, but if you look at her neck and her length on that side of the coconut you can see the pink/grey discoloration where she had scraped her scales away.
After the standard coaxing and manipulation hadn't made her so much as budge, we tried adding some lubricant. (Butter. It was on hand and I saw no harm...
)
You can see how much swelling she had on her belly, it was like that on both sides.
Here you can again see the scales she must have damaged.
But lube didn't help one bit, so finally even though I was worried about hurting her with this method, we cautiously moved foward with cutting her out. Polly owes her freedom to a pair of metal shears~
I was troubled by the damage though, the area that had been trapped was frighteningly narrow. I was unable to catch a picture since she was so anxious, but she looked like a finger that had been wearing a ring three sizes too small! While she moved around fine, she was noticablely swollen in places and the blood I could see inside her belly worried me, so I made the call and brought her in to see Dr. Greek.
A fifty-five dollar glance over later though, we had to admit that if there was internal damage then there wasn't anything we could really do for it anyways, but fortunately it appeared mostly superficial, so I was to treat it as such with daily betadine soaks and application of polybactirin.
I'm paranoid over my babies, so I'll still be holding my breath and keeping an eye on her for a while, but when I left her last night I was relieved with how well she seemed.
Needless to say I immediately tossed out all the coconut hides that had holes in them. I guess in closing don't be a dummy like me, learn from my mistake and just use common sense!
Thanks for reading~
I'm just reminding everyone to be careful with "hoops, loops, and holes" in their enclosures that could potentially cause an animal to get stuck, in particular ones that might work fine as a tunnel for a younger animal, but then start getting too tight for comfort as they grow up. It was an obvious rule I've always been aware of in the back of my mind, but for some reason I never noticed the problem right under my own nose until yesterday. *bangs head on wall*
I use coconut shell hides for my young western hognoses and some of them naturally have small holes on top. I've seen hatchlings emerge from these like lil' scaly periscopes, they can slide all the way through easily, and larger ones will often stick their pointy noses out through it, unable to fit anything more out. All was good until my beloved Evan's "hypo" girl, Polly, hit that awkward subadult size of about a hundred grams, yet remained in denial of her recent weight gain and believed she could still squeeze herself through if she just sucked it in. (I think we've all been there before right?)
It went about as well as you'd imagine.
She was stuck upside down when I found her, she had flipped over the hide and also her water dish with what must have been earlier flailing. All of the aspen shavings on one side of her tub had been completely displaced from her struggles.
What really makes this worse is the unfortunate timing of it all - I had been volunteering with the Southern California Herpetology Association & Rescue all that weekend and because of the potential contagions from the sick rescue animals, I'd made it a personal rule to not enter my reptile room until the day after and a thorough shower/change of clothes. Because of that, I'm not entirely sure when my poor girl got stuck. She could have possibly been like that for over an entire day!
I apologize in advance for the crappy pictures, I'm not that camera-savvy, but I hope you can see that she was quite stuck - she actually swelled up a lot from the trauma there which just compounded the problem.
I know it's hard to discern in these photos, but if you look at her neck and her length on that side of the coconut you can see the pink/grey discoloration where she had scraped her scales away.
After the standard coaxing and manipulation hadn't made her so much as budge, we tried adding some lubricant. (Butter. It was on hand and I saw no harm...
)
You can see how much swelling she had on her belly, it was like that on both sides.
Here you can again see the scales she must have damaged.
But lube didn't help one bit, so finally even though I was worried about hurting her with this method, we cautiously moved foward with cutting her out. Polly owes her freedom to a pair of metal shears~
I was troubled by the damage though, the area that had been trapped was frighteningly narrow. I was unable to catch a picture since she was so anxious, but she looked like a finger that had been wearing a ring three sizes too small! While she moved around fine, she was noticablely swollen in places and the blood I could see inside her belly worried me, so I made the call and brought her in to see Dr. Greek.
A fifty-five dollar glance over later though, we had to admit that if there was internal damage then there wasn't anything we could really do for it anyways, but fortunately it appeared mostly superficial, so I was to treat it as such with daily betadine soaks and application of polybactirin.
I'm paranoid over my babies, so I'll still be holding my breath and keeping an eye on her for a while, but when I left her last night I was relieved with how well she seemed.
Needless to say I immediately tossed out all the coconut hides that had holes in them. I guess in closing don't be a dummy like me, learn from my mistake and just use common sense!
Thanks for reading~
I'm sorry to hear that happened to one of your carpets as well, snakes just do the darndest things and if there's any possible flaw, they will find it. 
I'm very glad to hear that she was removed safely though, I hope she's doing well!!!