Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My ball pyton died tonight. He bloated up and died. He hasnt been eating for about 2 months and he ate a live mouse on saturday I went to check on him a few hours ago and he was very bloated and not moving much. I tried soaking him in 1 inch of water in a contanior on top of a cobra heat mat. An hour later I went to check on him and he was dead. 30 minuets ago he was alive. I dont know what happened. My other ball pythons are fine. They ate on thursday they eat frozen thawed. I dont think the mouse was to big for my ball python. The temperature in his cage was normal. Does any one know what happened?

Jillian

You left a live mouse in this cage for several hours unattended??? First, that was a mistake right there. Not sure bout the bloating, but it could have been an infection caused by a possiable bite from the mouse or several.

Now, lets think a little bout water heat. What do you do on your stove when you try to cook noodles? You boil the water by increasing temps to cook the noodles. You basically in most cases created that senario. Placing a bowl with water on top of a heat pad for however long you left the snake subjected to prolly overpowering temps in the bowl without little exscape. Basically, without relizing it, there is a very good possiability you cooked your snake alive.

In the future, for senerio purposes, if for exp the snake did actually get bitten and there was a scar or something more critical bring the animal to a qualified vet if your unsure or little doubt what to do. Why waste your time if your not certain when someone with hopefully a degree in herpotology and degrees in animal and medicine care might have helped. In the future, again for senerio purposes, clense the wound with an anticeptic. I've used neosporin and a cutip with rubbing alochol and lightly dab the infected wound, with rescues I've taken in or bein involved with injured animals.

For the record, going off feed for 2 months is nothing and is to be expected from Sept-Dec. If your snake had decent wieght in grams, prefably 1500 and wasn't losing sugnificant wieght measuring with a gram scale, you might have basically got worried about nothing and cause more problems for yourself and the snake. I suggest to going back to basics and start reading on basic husbantry of ball pythons and expanding your knowlege with all species. If you would have done the research beforehand, you would have known, leaving live pre unattended is a stupid risk to take for any keeper with any species of reptiles.

Appogize for coming out bein harsh, but if it were me, I rather have someone give it to me streight then trying to sugarcoat things.

Feel free to email me with any questions.

He said a few hours ago he noticed the snake looked bloated. He fed the snake Saturday.

Christy

Hi there,

It's hard to say why your bp died. I seriously doubt it was from feeding a mouse live (and I understand you didn't leave it in the cage several hours).

Maybe there was something wrong with your snake because of the bloating, but alot of snakes are bloated a few days after they eat. If I had to guess I would have to agree that you may have heated him up too much with the heatmat/water. They can drown too, even in a small amount of water if they panic.

I'm really sorry for your loss.
Good luck, Christy

Sorry for your loss.

A mouse will often bloat in a snakes stomach after being consumed, so this may, or may not, have anything to do with the it's death. It could have been sick for a long time, perhaps having internal parasites, setting up a secondary infection. Consuming the mouse may have aggrivated the infection causing internal bleading. This is TOTAL SPECULATION on my part.

Also, I guess you could have cooked him on the heat pad, but IMHO that seems very unlikely unless you keep that pad really hot.

If the mouse wasn't completey thawed, there is a possibility that it could have lowered the snakes body temperature, but it's highly unlikey that this is what killed your critter.

Anyway, a necropsy is the only way you're going to find anything out for sure.

First of all, sorry about that guy reaming you out for something you didn't even do. Sometimes you just get people like that who jump to the wrong conclusion.

What did he look like when he died? What im looking for is was he coiled up with his mouth open?

When I worked at a petstore I had a customer put their BP in water that was too hot and that was what happened.

Might have been that.

Other than that it could have been any number of underlying problems.]

Sorry for your loss

~Mim
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necropsy Neumann

I'm sorry to read about your bp dying. It's something none of us wants to deal with. If you have any other snakes or plan on buying another ball python anytime soon I would highly recommend you follow Neumann's advice and get a necropsy done. Don't freeze the snake in the meantime.

It might cost a pretty penny to have one performed but it will (hopefully) tell you what the cause of death was. This way no matter what the cause was (improper husbandry, parasites, infection) you will be able to correct it before getting a new snake. It could very well be that your husbandry was perfect and that there was no infection, it may have been injury, an internal birth defect, or any number of things.
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