Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Its me again. I am about to give up! My sand boa has been laying under the substrate all week. I usually see her out and about at different times. She ate last Saturday. This morning she was out, and she looks strange to me. Like she is made of rubber, especially around her head and neck areas. It almost looks like to me she is under-nurished like her neck is all caved in. She has eaten for me regularly since I obtained her which as been about one month. I have no idea what this is about. She did skip a week of eating due to freaking out after getting a piece of crushed walnut shell in her mouth. She did kill her meal, but then freaked out when this piece of substrate got in her mouth while she was trying to swallow it. I don't think she could be hungry, but I don't know if anything else could be wrong. Could she be impacted?

I took a pic, but don't know how to load it since it is asking for a URL.

Several things are possible. If it has been fed too few prey items of too small a size, it could be losing weight and showing around the neck. Two options I believe are more likely are;
1. the snake is going into shed and the skin is just being pulled tight around the neck
2. the snake is dehydrated and simply needs water back in its muscles to pull out again.

Hope that something works for you.

I keep a water dish with about a 1/4" of water in it at all times. How does one rehydrate a snake?

If you haven't seen it drinking on its own, you may want to put the snake's head in the water. Sometimes when they're younger, they don't find the water on their own.

Well I am glad to say that all is well with my snake. She had shed most of her old skin off by this morning. I wrapped and held her in a damp, warm wash cloth for about an 1/2 hour this afternoon. The rest of the old skin came off. This is my first albino kenyan, and is was hard for me to tell that she was for sure in shed. Thanks so much for your help.