...and nothing works. NuThInG wUrX $#!% I don't understand! What do the vets know, and why can't I know it? I just want my little albino girl Belladonna not to have mites n e more. She's had them since I got her. I've had her two years plus now. I've tried Jurassimite, Snake Oil (Benson & Sons), Mite Off (Zoo Med), Betadine (Hospital Grade, and Wal*Mart Grade), I've tried Equate Bedding Spray, Reptile Relief (Natures Chemistry or sumthin lyk th@), vinegar, No bedding, newspaper bedding, coconut shell bed-a-beast bedding (found out some mites can come from that stuff), now I'm currently using aspen bedding cuz some know-it-all reptile doctor guy said mites can't survive in aspen even with water. Sure, whatever. Please, do forgive my bitterness, but I just want my snake healthy so I don't have to subject her to these horrible failing experiments anymore, and the time I can have with her can be mite-free and happy-go-lucky, like the relationship I have with Caber, my 9 foot male (5 years old). He is mite-free, and I bought him from a grungy pet shop that didn't keep their animals very sanitarily (is that a word?). I feed her locally purchased rats, I know, I know, bad idea, and I agree, but until now, RodentPro just cost too much, and it seemed pointless for me to buy anything less than a year supply of food for two different sized snakes. Great deals on sterile lab-type mite-free food for $20.00 more a year than I can get them for locally, but the sterility of the whole procedure will be worth it, not to mention a stable, regimented feeding cycle. Forgive my lengthy rants, it's why I don't write often! Anyhow, please, any serious takers, inform me and my ignorant ways! Cycling them chemicals worked the best so far, but they adapted. I used to just pick them off and burn them, but she's 5 feet now, that's a lot-o-surface area. They are in her eye sockets, for the love of *GOD*, I would lose my tiny shred of sanity if I had mites in my freakin eye sockets, and didn't have the appendages to get them out. Please help me help her, and the future snakes I hope to own from this horrific fate! I've already lost a bolivian silverback boa to mites, because they eventually broke her down with anemia. when I lose a pet, I hurt, a lot. More than i ever thought I could over a snake or animal, but they are my totem, my dream animal, my goal in life. They are spirit guides and are intelligent on other levels of intelligence, and should be respected for that alone. They know more than we think they do. They are crafty, plotting, and educated animals, and I just want to serve them. I wish to eradicate these bugs! And all bugs who come in my way! I'm an herbalist without a garden, so I have no neem or nicotiana or pyrethrum geranium, but I could go buy a tupperware of ladybugs and have those little critters walkin all over the place, munching all that is mite in their paths. GGRRRRR. This is a war. And I refuse to lose it. Please, you hidden readers, the ones who dont post, but know, if you wish to not reply to this post, at least reply to me, privately, via email ( dark_eyece@yahoo.com ) please! I want them gone, and I want them forgotten. I keep my snakes in glass aquaria. She's 5 foot (4 foot 9 to five foot), in a 5 foot by 2 foot by 2 foot tank. when I clean her cage I take all the bedding out. Then I vacuum up the little pieces. Then I spray the whole tank down inside out with windex. Then I wipe it down. Then I apply the more organic (animal friendly) mite sprays to the entire surface are of her tank. I let that dry. I then add a cat litter box (that has never seen cat litter, I bought it for the hidey hole purpose, it has a hole cut out of one side ofr access and tiny drill hole on the opposite side for ventilation, but some thermal retention), I then add another tupperware with a shallow layer of water in it because all animals should have access to water at all times (I'm a piscean and refuse to budge on that, count on it). I then bathe my snake, rub her down with snake oil, pad her eyes lightly with a qtip dabbed in that herbal snake oil, and let the oil sit for a few minutes in an empty bath tub. A few minutes later I rub her down with a paper towel and toss it, and put her gently back in her home, which has aired out cuz I keep fans in the snake room, and it was "airing" during her bath. I do this every 4-6 days, depending. Way more work than any snake I have ever had before, and I have had several, so spare the sarcasm. I'm not saying i'm a pro, I'm just saying im No PhOoL. I have most of the books that discuss pythons in more depth than "this is a burmese python. it gets this big. Here is a picture of it eating a deer." yay. I have almost all of Bob Clark's entry level stuff ya know what he publishes in Reptiles, rant rant bloody rant angry. Thank you for reading this essay on 3Y3ECE's hatred for these arachnidish fiends of doom.

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