Bryant,

To your point, many of those parasites have coevolved with those snake species for millions of years; if you're not seeing symptoms many would argue (probably correctly) that pumping chemicals into your snake is really not helping anyone. That said, if the snake is ever run down for any other reason (e.g. stress from breeding, a mouth infection) then those otherwise harmless worms may begin to exhibit pathology... Yeah, it's a bit of a catch 22. The nightcrawlers you described sound like Ascarids and I've never, personally, seen a sizeable one in a snake. If you could produce one of those I could definitely get it into one of the two collections I referred to, and of course your name would be on it.

If you do choose to treat the snake, I'd recommend piperazine citrate (40-60 mg/kg orally) over panacur (fenbendazole) if you're still suspecting Ascarids. While both are fairly broad-spectrum de-wormers, piperazine has a known method of action -- specifically it kills the worm in such a way that it undergoes a flaccid paralysis (as opposed to "spastic" -- this makes passing the dead worms much easier and it's gentler on the snake. If you do see worms again, throw them in some ethyl or isopropyl alcohol and call me up!

Good luck.

Brad
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http://www.waffahousereptiles.com

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