I know what you mean. I just got back from Mexico last week and left my mom in charge of animal care while I was gone. She came over every day to check everyone's water, feed my lizard and play with the cats. Apparently, she is terrible at locking a snake cage and she is SO fired. I got home and three of my snakes were gone. Three! I was terrified because we live in an apartment and my next door neighbor HATES snakes. Anyway, the good news is with a little determination I found all three within two days. Adults are easier to find than hatchlings. What I do is follow the walls from the cage and throughly search anything they could have crawled into. I found one in a shoe under my bed. One was in a shoe in my closet and the other was curled up in the other corner of the same closet. Previous escapees have also liked to hide under dressers. You can try leaving out a thawed mouse with a warm spot (human heat pad) along the edge of a wall. If he's hungry he might go for it, but I haven't had any luck with that method. All of my escapes were found by accident or searching. I have also heard people say you can leave flour on the floor to see if they crawl through it and get an idea of where they were headed. I also search for clues. One of mine left me a nasty surprise near the bed so I figured there was a snake in the vicinity. Good luck with your search!
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Anna
The Zoo
Corns
1.0 Snow - Cornelius
1.1 Ghost(pastel) - Eek & Boo
1.1 Amel - Parker & Scarlet
0.1 Hypo - Nikko
0.1 Anery - Missy
0.1 Hypo Motley - Cordelia aka Cordy
Boas
0.1 Columbian (BCC) - Bella
Lizards
0.0.1 Leopard Gecko - Leo
Rats
0.1 Dumbo - Moon
1.0 Rex - Pluto
Cats
1.1 Siamese - Blue & Fiona
0.1 Gray DMS - Druscilla aka Dru
Horses
1.0 Thourghbred (Hunter/Jumper) - Morgan's Majesty aka Cody
-Lauren 
