Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was feeding my Desert King today and gave her a live mouse instead of her usual killed. i know i'll probably be crucified on this board for doing it, but i do this to give her some excersize. I watched her coil it up and eat it like usual but when i came back later to check i found a piece of bedding and some blood on her left eye. I panicked and took her into the bathroom to remove the bedding and sprayed some water on the cut to wash off any remaining particles. i used my magnifying glass to get a good look at it and i think what happened is that the mouse tore off part of the protective scale that covers her eye. You can see little jagged edges around an area on the eye. She could move her eye fine and seemed to be able to track my finger with it ok(not great but it's probably because of the blood).

the wierd part is that she didn't seem bothered by it at all! When i had her out she just moved normally and flicked her tongue normally like always!

I did some research on it and found 1 or 2 cases like mine where the eye was fine after the next shed(in one the entire eye was depressed but came back to normal after the next shed!)

I called the local vet to see if they could help and they said they could take a look at her tomorrow for $50. Which is pretty steep for me right now since i need to have my van smogged next week.

Has this happened to anyone else? How did the snake turn out?

Should i take my snake into the vet or just wait and see if she'll be alright? There's probably not alot they can do besides just spray some antiseptic and a little salene on her.

Even though the price may be steep, I recommend you see a vet. The cost of replacing your snake will be more than the vet bill. Also, if you cant afford the vet bills, maybe you shouldnt have the animal. That being said, I'm a hippocrite! I have done the "wait and see" thing with sick and injured snakes before and usually things turn out OK. I had a large male knoblochi that had his eye punctured by the claw of a live mouse. It bled for awhile, looked ugly for quite sometime, but appeared to heal completely. It's impossible to tell if vision in that eye was affected. Now I pre-kill everything I feed to my snakes other than pinkies.

Greg

it's not so much that i cant afford it, than it is i don't think i need to go and pay $50 for a vet to tell me what i already know.

The injured area has a scab over it now. It looks pretty bad from far away, but up close you see she still moves her eye and it's just a superficial thing.

I've learned my lesson though! I'll never feed her live food again, not even stunned! At about 15 or 16 she's just not as good at killing the mice and it's too much of a danger to her health (and my state of mind!).

I hope others will learn from my mistake: Just because your snake ate live mice when it was younger doesn't mean it will be able to do so it's whole life.

I'm not saying that feeding snakes live mice is a bad thing. I'm in the minority on this board who don't condemn live feeding. They're stuck in a glass box all day, feeding is the one of the only things they have left to connect them to the wild. It also keeps them more interested in feeding. I've seen that snakes who eat live food have alot less problems with refusing meals than snakes who are fed f/t(except with ball pythons, doesn't seem to make much a difference).

All i'm saying is know your snake's limits. It keeps your snake healthy and keeps you from going insane!