This is a kinda long post but I wanted to be thorough, so please read and help if you can...



I have an 11 year old female Colombian boa that recently went through the normal pre-shedding routine with blued-over eyes, etc. When it was time for the shed to happen, however, she appeared to be having difficulty so I gave her a good soak, only to find out that about 90% of the old skin seemed to be literally GLUED on. She did some belly shedding in a few spots, but VERY LITTLE of the actual body skin came off, and in spots where it did, it looked not like new fresh skin, but like the "shiny layer" had been ripped off with the old stuff (does that make sense?) and this continued for a couple days, with another abnormality- the not-so-good-looking new skin started to harden in spots. So, I though an extra long soak was in order. But, when I took her out of the water, two of those hard spots actually started to COME OFF, leaving only raw, pink skin underneath! What I did then was to put triple-antibiotic ointment all over those two spots (I wanted no infection) and I've watched the snake carefully now for five days. She is acting fine, other than the fact that her skin obviously needs to go. BUT- today, when I checked on her, she now looks like she is preparing to shed AGAIN! Her eyes are starting to blue over again (and she only got rid of one eyecap the last time!). Has anyone ever heard of anything like this before? Even though her body just tried to go through the shedding process, could it be realizing that it didn't work and be triggering the process again? One possible cause- before this whole problem, she was with another snake which regurgitated a rat, literally covering them both in rat slime/grease. Could this have caused that initial bad shed? Thanks for reading this long post and PLEASE help if you can!



Phil

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