Reptile & Amphibian Forums

The worst thing in the entire whole world happened today
I bought my tangerine milk snake, only about a foot or so long, from the pet store. they put him in a cloth BAG of all things and tied up the end, but i guess not well enough because by the time i got home he was NOT in that bag. I am 100% positive he was in it when I first got in the car and I know he didn't fall out when i opened the door because I looked at the bag before doing so and checked my door first, thinking he could fall out if he was beside the door. My suspicion is that he is up inside the front passenger seat where it is warmest. Please, for the sake of my sanity, somebody tell me they have an idea for luring him out or finding him, PLEASE!
my father suggested opening up all the doors, getting all my friends to cover the doors, and letting me spray lyscol or something, anything, up inside it so he'd move. I don't know if it would be a good idea though, I don't want to hurt him but at the same time if I don't do SOMETHING he'll die anyway! heeeeeeeeelp!

I had 2 snakes escape on me and they both were found in a place that conducted heat. One was found under my sisters bed near the a heater vent and the other was found several months later in the garage curled up inside the dryer panel. Unfortunatly he didn't make it because the dryer element burnt him and killed him. But I was thinking maybe you can lure him out with some kind of heat pad in a shoebox or rubbermade. Maybe cut a little entrance hole so he could get in and keep checking to see if he's in there. If it's cold enough in the car he'll most likely go somewhere warm. Just a thought. Hope you find him. Keep us posted. Good Luck!!

I have no idea if this going to work.
put the steroe in the car on with loud house music and a good bassdrum on. Cuz if im in my room and i set the bassdrum too loud my snake freaks out and gets active and tries to go out of the terrarium. heh he might get a bit of stress from it but its the only idea i can come up with. GOOD LUCK and keep us posted

greets,

narco

the lady at the pet store heard my story this morning and took pity on me and gave me some hot hands hot pack thingies. i put 4 on the floor and 3 in the bag he came in. i also heard from a girl today that she found her snake by setting out a bowl of water. she said they could smell water and he would probably come out for it. another person suggested a bowl of milk, since it's a "milk" snake but she's not very knowledgeable on snakes so i'm not too sure about the idea. i'm going to try tape and everything, hopefully tonight he'll be attracted to the heat packs. at least i didn't take my dad's advice on the lysol, something told me that was a horrible idea...

sorry for the caps, but it is VERY important. The snake can get stuck on the tape and then you will pull his skin off when you try to free him.

I would suggest setting up a snake trap. It is pretty simple. Use an appropriate size soda bottle, for a small snake use a 16-20 oz bottle, for a larger snake use a 2 litre bottle. Cut the top off the bottle right where it is the largest. Then insert the top of the bottle backwards into the bottom of the bottle. What you are doing is making a fancy funnel type trap. Put the trap that you have baited with a frozen/thawed mouse of the appropriate size in the car on the floor. You can put one of those heat pads under it. Leave it overnight. In the morning, hopefully you will come out to a sleeping snake in the bottle.
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sue

YOU ARE WONDERFUL!
I suspected that about the tape trap actually... the guy at the store, when I told him my situation (it was at wal-mart in the HUNTING section, i was looking for the heat pads, i wasn't asking for advice he just decided to give it to me) said "oh, just use fly paper or mouse trap paper." I just gave him a look of death and hatred and hissed "I want the snake to LIVE... AND keep his SKIN!" he just shrugged and said "it wouldn't hurt it" what a stupid redneck. made me sick!
thank you so much, i will get on that right away!

I agree, never use that. A co-worker just found a glue mouse trap with a poor pueblan milk stuck to it. It took me 45 minutes and lots of mineral oil to get him free. So far he is doing good but that is something I never want to do again. Oh yeh, my thanks for getting him free....the little monster bit me.

haha, it was a love bite...

Sorry I'm a little late. Hopefully you live somewhere in the South or at least the interior of your car remained relatively temperate last night or potentially the first way you are going to find the animal is chasing down that odor.

Firstly, there is nothing wrong with just good old fashioned looking. Despite what you might think, these animals are amazingly adept in secreting themselves away in places you would NEVER think to look. If it's cold where you are then the animal probably sought heat and quite probably towards the area that held the most residual heat as the car cooled. In that case, check around the engine firewalls, or even the engine compartment itself. As much as we think cars are escape proof, for an animal such as you describe most cars would be a piece of cake to get out of. Not doomsaying here, just an observation.

If it's still temperate where you are (to the snake that is) and the animal is well fed I'd look in any nook or cranny I could see in to including the trunk, under the spare if the spare is in the trunk...heck it could even be in the door frames for that matter.

If this seems a little extreme allow me to give an example. About six months ago we had an escapee. A yearling Tex Rat. We tore the place apart looking for him and finally conceded he found his way out. About a month ago, I was in a bathroom that we are remodeling, lo and behold, coming out of the hole in the wall where the TP holder used to reside (in the cinderblock actually) came our missing snake. Fully three inches longer and in posession of the same "Ratitude" he had when he left.

Keep the faith and keep us posted...

Jeff Nichols

well yes, i'm in Virginia so the nights were decent as of late. Only tonight has it been very cold and we took an extension cord and whipped out the heating pad. It's now in there with the little soda-bottle home-made "trap" with a thawed out frozen pinkie in it. HOPEFULLY he will go "gee i'm cold, i better go to this warm thing, and eat this other thing" and then stay there until 6 AM when i check. i'm so worried about him. everyone keeps asking me if i'm scared of it biting me or assuming my only problem is being too scared to drive the car now for my own sake. i'm far more concerned about his health than I am about a baby-size snake nibble. ugh! some people!

thank you so much for all the advice, i'm taking every ounce of it. we've done the thorough searching. i'm so tempted to just start ripping my car apart... by the way, my car is an SUV/GMC Jimmy to be precise. yay, even more room for him to hide. perfect...
wish me luck
at least I keep hearing stories about them showing up a week later. i very much hope it comes true for me. but i'd still like x-ray vision so i could see where he is!

just so he can see the trap. Just make sure that the temp in the trap is not too hot. Don't really know if it would make a difference, but it probably can't hurt.
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sue