This was the first regurge I've had to deal with and, boy oh boy, do I hope it is my last.
I fed my 6 foot male guyana redtail the first jumbo rat it had ever eaten three days ago. (I realize now that I probably should have waited a little longer to move up from large rats, but, live and learn...) Yesterday, I smelled some urates coming from the cage, and, unfortunately, the boa was sitting right on top of it. I really didn't want to move him because his belly was still so distended from the meal, but I figured having waited roughly 45 hours, it would be ok. So move him I did, even though it was apparent that he didn't want to be messed with. An hour or so later, I noticed the stench! Sure enough, he'd lost his lunch. Don't get me wrong, I felt really horrible for the poor snake for having undergone the trauma of a regurge, but cleaning up the mess was easily the most vile, repulsive experience I've had in many, many years. About 1/2 of the rat had been digested, and the inside of the enclosure was covered in digestive fluid, rat guts and clumps of thick, brown sludge which I can only assume was partially-digested rat. The smell was beyond description. Anyway, I really didn't want to stress the snake out any further, but I yanked him out of the cage to begin the clean-up and wipe the digestive enzymes off of his body...which he had obviously crawled through..because I figured it probably wasn't too great for him to be bathing in his own stomach acid.
Anyway, long story short, my only lingering concern is that after this experience, I noticed that there was a grape-sized pouch of skin (right under the jaw where the head meets the neck) which seemed to be fluid filled. At one point, I actually put him in a few inches of water in my bathtub, and he expelled some of the brown fluid out of his mouth upon contact with the water, but still the pouch remained. He looked to be in quite a lot of distress, opening his mouth, lifting his head up to try to clear his mouth etc. The muscles of the neck were laterally compressed as if he were trying to swallow, and the weird think about the pouch was the it travelled up and down his body depending on how he was angled (think of a drop of water rolling up and down the length of a stick as either end of the stick is moved higher than the other.) I tried to open his mouth to see if I could pour some of the fluid out, but at this point, it was pretty obvious that I was just tormenting the guy needlessly and I put him back into his enclosure. So, what's the deal with the pouch? Anyone seen this before? Is it maybe that in regurging the rat, the elastic skin around the neck got stretched and will return to normal shortly? Or is there something I can do to try to help him get rid of any regurge fluid still trapped in his esophagus?
Anyway, I'm just going to leave him totally undisturbed for about ten days. I guess I will try feeding about two weeks from now with maybe a medium rat just to make sure his stomach enzymes have had a chance to build back up. Is there anything else I can do? Put some grapeseed extract in his water maybe?
Any guidance would be appreciated. Sorry for the long post...I've just gulped down a lot of coffee.
p.s. I still have that smell stuck in my nostrils.
Marc
