Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi Ive never actually owned a hot before (Im only fifteen, so thats probably a good thing), but I was just wondering has anyone ever had any of their own venomous snakes escape inside their house?

My friend once put it to me as this... Venomous are on a completely different playing field than non-vens. He takes short cuts with nons that he refuses to take with vens. For instance, if a hot snake is bagged, it is then put into a locked box and not just a rubbermaid bin. Hot bags are double checked for holes, where non-vens are often just tossed into bags. His hots were never kept in slide bins. Always under lock and key in wooden cages.

With this mentality, he would occasionally lose a non-ven to an escape. He never lost a hot. He and I both individually came close to losing an eastern diamondback when it was out of the cage. The snake was so long and powerful that it almost got behind some cages in the room. Eventually, someone did accidentally let the edb get behind some cages. Luckily, he got the snake back without incident and never let that person work with his venomous collection again.

I have known of one person who lost a baby forest cobra in a wall. It was a venomoid and he eventually got it back. I know for a while he was trying to bait it out with live mice in a critter keeper... I don't know the circumstances under which he lost the snake. I would like to think he did his best to follow protocol and it was some freak incident...

I've "lost" a few eyelash vipers, only to find them nicely tucked up in the lip of my vision cages. Mirrors with retractable handles make it easy and safe to spot hidden snakes.
Other than that, I've never lost a hot. I usually go to extreme measures with cages....taping any gaps in the glass with felt, locking the cages or screwing them shut, keeping them in a room by themselves, covering any holes in the walls and vents with mesh. It's the safest way to go. I did keep one snake in a bedroom, but that was for temperature reasons, and I had the enclosure completely secure. I also never let anyone near my hots, and only two people ever saw them, my live in girl-friend and my brother.....even my best friends never saw them.
I know of people that have had snakes get out of their enclosures, but luckily, they were in secure rooms. People have to remember that they are snakes, and snakes are known for magic tricks, so every precaution has to be taken.

I would love to hear the details of this story, and I cannot remember if I first came across it here or elsewhere on the web. But it was a memorable cautionary tale: extremely unprepared novice buys the black mamba of his dreams, keeping it in something like a 55 gallon aquarium with objects holding the lid down, in his Manhattan studio apartment which was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and somewhat wanting in regular housekeeping, i.e. a book-and-paper covered pigsty. I don't remember if this was an escape per se in the sense that the mamba got out on its own or if it was dropped while being hooked and promptly disappeared like magic into the paper-strewn mess. I may be elaborating a bit, but I do remember reading how stress-inducing it was for the experienced hot keeper who came to the rescue to walk into this mess of a tiny apartment and start poking around for a well-concealed black mamba which could be either on the carpet under papers and furniture or above their heads on the highest shelves.

thanks for the stories