I lost my hatchling cal king shortly after purchasing her way back in November (or possibly October). Turns out the "reptile" cage I put her in had a tiny hole for passing the wire to a heat lamp through, and through that she made her escape.
Since then we've seen NO SIGN of her and as time has gone by we've pretty much given her up as dead or escaped.
Today, as I went through some boxes in the room in which she was kept, I found that a box I'd gone through less than a week before and noticed nothing odd.... this time it had a perfect snake skin on it. Soft, malleable, not in the slightest bit crinkly. It's my experience with snake skins that they get crinkly and brittle with age, but this one is soft as if it was just shed and the apparant size of the snake is at least double the size she was before.
I'm just not familiar enough with snake skins to know if they DO get crinkly, or if my supposition that soft = new is wrong. I'm in Arizona, which is very arid. If I have found a newly shed snakeskin is it time again to start leaving out pinkies, heat lamps, and water for her? I know that some people have recovered snakes months after they've lost them, but we'd really given up hope.
~Sasheena
