Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Well we got in a pair of bloods yesterday, one male supposed het for albino, partially striped as well, well we explained to the person we bought them from how to pack them and ship them (foam lined box, heat pack, standard things for the cold weather), well we got them yesterday night, not in a proper cardboard box, all the openings to the box were completely sealed with tape, and opening it finally only to see that they were both dead, which is sad because they were beautiful babies, and Im sure would have gotten even better with age as they do..now all that we can really hope for is to get refunded our payment on them..really bummed out about them being dead and all though I was looking forward to having some more baby bloods to play with and raise up. Well just figured I would post about this here to all the fellow blood keepers on this forum.

Amelia

Hey,
I am so sorry to hear that, I would be so bummed my self; I can't say enough. Sounds like they really didn't have a clue about any of the necessary details for shipping, and took the chance and shipped their way, despite what you told them. That is messed up! You'd better work on getting your money back for their error.

-Angel
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"Until we lose our self, there is no way of finding our self."
-Henry Miller.

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He lined with some newspaper..no heat pack at all, although being a small package it just might have cooked the snake though, I do not know if the box was cold when it was opened though, as I was not the one to open it up, bf picked it up on the way home from work.

Hey,
What were the temperatures at the location that it was shipped from and what were the temperatures in your city too. If there was no insulation also, in the box, there is also, a good chance the snake just froze to death. It's very likely that one of the two scenerios took place obviously. No styrofoam insulation? cold temps?

-Angel
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"Until we lose our self, there is no way of finding our self."
-Henry Miller.

It is fairly easy to overheat and kill a small snake in a small, insulated shipping box if you go overboard with the heat packs, even in the middle of winter. On the other end of the spectrum, I have received young bloods in from half day shipping events that felt like an ice cube, but after a slow temperature acclimation, came through with no health issues or R.I. Bloods can take temps down into the 50's for a few hours without a problem, but lower than that would probably limit their survival. Oxygen depletion during shipping is not a problem whatsoever, as you cannot suffocate a snake in a sealed box even over several days. We did some experiments on small colubrids in the mid 80's due to this shipping concern, and found that they could survive for 96 hours in small airtight containers at room temperature without any adverse effects. In this case with no heat packs, unless they were in some area of extreme heat, I would agree with Angel in that they were probably frozen to death. Hope you can work something out.

Kelly

That really sucks!!! I hope whoever sold you the snakes is going to replace them or give you your money back. I had been trying to find a way to purchase a pair of het albino bloods for many, many years! finally a couple months ago I was told I was being shipped a 14 month old female het albino. I opened the box and there was a 14" snake inside, OH WELL. It was alive and healthy. Sorry for ranting.
Hope you get your situation solved.

Thanks to all who replied, im sure later tonight if there is no paypal payment returned then we will be e-mailing him again, he asked for the tracking number of the box to give to paypal or whatnot and then said he would return the money..that was 2 days ago..other then that the other blood that we had coming in arrived yesterday, a little female, supposed to be partially striped and het for albino..and from what I remember it doesn't look like the pictures we were given either, but I couldn't check for sure as the site they were on was down..