I almost lost my new female hondo a couple of hours ago. I took her out to feed shortly after having done the same for the abnorma. As is usual I took her out first to handle her for awhile... long story short I had her in hand while removing the mice from the glass of warm I thaw them out in... in that short moment I'm concentrating on the mice she crawls off my hand onto the chair I'm sitting in and then onto the floor... I reach down to pick her up and off she goes under the couch... did I say long story short?
Nearly an hour later she's back in her cage... the sectional couch has suffered major damage to it's batting due to the knife I took to it... every item in the living room (where all this took place) that could be picked up and inspected was tossed into the bathroom tub while I cursed myself in no uncertain terms... finally found her along the drawer slide of the lowest drawer in my desk... the desk is in the opposite direction to her original path of travel.
Less than five seconds of inattention was all it took to raise my blood pressure and heart rate for nearly an hour. In that same time I discovered new ways of describing my shortcomings as well... I might be a little more sympathetic next time I hear a story of an escaped and lost snake because it can happen... and fast.
Gerry
Anyway, I too was feeding and turned around to get a pink for one of my baby eastern kings. I closed the cage after placing the pink on the feeding surface, assuming the snake was still in its humid hide where it was when I opened the drawer. Well, two days later I was walking to my snake room and low and behold there she was coiled up next to a shoe at the snake room door. WTF!!! She had zoomed out of her tub in the seconds I turned my back. I was lucky to find her for sure, seeing I had no idea she was out. The other animal (highly prized zonata at that) was caught and placed into a temporary enclosure by my neighbor until my return from zonata hunting in CA. 