I don't think I have ever had, or ever will have to swallow a larger lump in my throat while posting a thread than right now.

My hypo eastern garter snake, the jaw dropping one-of-a-kind all-over pale snake, is dead. No descendants, and so the gene is forever lost. This was the most prized animal in my entire collection. I found her myself and could not wait for the day I would finally get some viable offspring from her. Now it will never happen. If I had to choose just one snake to keep and sell all the rest it would have been her. Fate truly has dealt me a cruel hand!

I'd noticed over the past 2 months or so that she had taken to crawling around with a slight tilt to her head. It wasn't all the time, and it was so subtle that at times I told myself I was seeing things. Also, some of her facial scales around her nose appeared to be slightly deforming. Well, I began taking my snakes off feed a few weeks ago and I turned off mostly all of the lights in the snakeroom, as well as decreased the ambient temp to around 70 as opposed to 80. Sunday night I noticed while doing some maintenance my hypo struggled a bit to take a breath! I examined her, she simply seemed to be taking deeper breaths than normal. No popping or wheezing, no extra fluid or mouth gaping, no swollen lung or arched neck, as would be a typical full blown respiratory infection. I put her into a TLC tank with lots of heat and left her be. I've seen this happen on rare occasion and if caught in time a minor respiratory distress can often be reversed and dissapear overnight if caught extremely early. So yesterday she looked better already in the morning, and today she seemed to be doing very well before I left for work, but when I got home she was upside down, lifeless.

I've lost the most important snake I own. The only damned snake in my entire collection of over 100 to have an issue. It's about driven me to quit snakes altogether!

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