Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I had one of my 05 CH females get out of her cage about a month ago. I keep my snakes in sterilite tubs on shelves with heat tape underneath, at least until my new Vision racks come in. She popped the lid off and went cruising. I have a number that have done this recently, which is the reason I now have bricks covering each container.

When I noticed she was gone I stripped the snakeroom, not a sign other than a turd under a shelf. I then went through the entire house thinking maybe she got out of the room. Well today she was found inside the motor housing of my shop vac. My boys were cleaning their moms car and the hose popped out of the shop vac. When they went to put it back in they noticed a head pop out and quickly retreat. Needless to say I had to disassemble the housing to get her out, but she seems fine. The shopvac is kept in the snakeroom most of the time, so her temp was fine which is why she probably stayed there for so long. The only thing that freaks me out is that I have used that shopvac at least 6 times since she disappeared.

I am interested in hearing about the strangest places any of you have found your escapees. Up til this moring it was in my speaker in the living room, but I would have to say this takes the cake.
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1.21 ball pythons
1 speckled kingsnake
1 snapping turtle
1.0 argentine horned frog
1.1 English Bulldogs

I've had 6 escapes in my snake keeping times.

A regular hatchling corn...never found it.

An anery corn escaped from a tank on my bookshelf once. The book shelf was next to an open window...on the second floor.
We found that snake...MONTHS later...dead in the road. It was 4 times the size it had been when it escaped. That was sad.

Cain, my yearling male BP, escaped once. I found him under his ten gallon tank, chillin under the heating pad.

Another time my amel corn got out and my roomies cat found it. No harm came of the snake.

Another time I found Damien, my 3 1/2 foot BP, UNDER my pillow. I reached under my pillow as I was about to go to bed and there he was.

And the last escape was last week. Anery striped corn, het. ghost...
Got out, evaded my cats, got downstairs, out the front door...
and froze to death on my front porch. That's a sad ending.

Glad you found yours!
My female het pied escaped on the one night I only checked 49 times instead of 50 that all the cages were shut tight.
What a feeling of panic it is when you first discover that door slid open 3/4" and of course, NO snake!
I crawled around the floor for about 45 minutes. I was sick to my stomach about to give up, since I live in an old house with lots of nooks and crannies. Then I just had a feeling when I looked at a SEALED box of papers destined to go to recycling that day. Sure enough when I ripped open the Box she was all curled up in the corner. She had climbed in through the handle hold....What a relief!
If I never go though that again it will be too soon!
BRGDS,
AVD
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"There is a fine line between a hobby and mental illness"
COLD BLOOD.........WARM HEART

This is always my favorite picture - Harry at 500 grams had managed to squeeze himself out of the 1/4 inch gap between the tops of his cage and got out one night. We tossed the house for days looking for him with no luck - three weeks later my hubby came home from work and flipped on the lights in the kitchen and there he was:

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Tosha

"Nihil facimus sed id bene facimus"

10.35.0 Ball Python (Harry and Fluffy and gang)
1.0.0 Angolan Python (Anakin Skywalker)
0.0.1 Green Tree Python (Verdi - yeah I know but my kids love the book)
0.2.0 Feline (Pippen and Pandora)
0.0.1 Desert Tortoise (Pope John Paul aka JP )
2.2.1 Fish (1,2,3,4)
0.0.1 Lizard rescued from feline
0.0.0 frogs rescued from pool skimmer

That picture is great! I had a hatchling ball python escape her cage once. She was gone for a whole month before she turned up. I had just started breeding mice, and I had a breeding pair in a birdcage on my desk. One day I came home from work and I found one mouse missing, and one fat snake caught in the cage. I am still inpressed she squeezed into a half inch wire space!

I also had a albino cali king escape its cage...do not ask me how! Anyways he snuck into the rat bin hoping for a meal, and was completly shredded apart by a 2 pound male rat. Needless to say all colubrids are in sliding top cages now!
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*Amy*

have kind of a funny one. about 8 years ago i was snake sitting a friend almost 6 foot red tail boa named big red well at that time i didnt know to much about snakes so me being only 18years old i fed the snake and left the lid off the tank and walked away. i came back into the room about 15min later to find an empty cage. i called my friend in a panic to tell him what had happened and that i could not find the snake how can you not find a 6 foot snake in a 13'x13' room. so the seach began we looked everywhere under the bed, table, nightstand, dresser...ect well the one place we didnt think to look was in the closet the door had been closed and the only thing in there was the hot water heater as far as we knew. a week later i opened the closet dont remeber why but i did and there was big red he had wraped him self around the base of the hot water heater so called my friend he came to try and extract the snake to no avail we ended up having to remove the wall of the closet to get the snake out. man were my parent P/O at that but mom could finally rest at night she was afraid the snake was going to eat her in the middle of the night i thought that was hularious.

P.S. sorry about the long stupid story but i find i funny
Chrissy
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2.1.0 ball python (aragorn, frodo, arwen)
2.0.0 columbian boa (wiggles and squiggles)
1.0.0 rat snake (alabastered)
0.1.0 corn snake (baby)
3.3.0 cats (rockie, bs, brownie, lerrado, kole, camie)
1.3.0 kids (dilyen, dakota, chyanne, sierra)
Brian n Chrissy

Our female ball was about a year old when she got out. She was missing for almost 3 months. For a couple of days we started noticing that things on top of the entertainment center were on the floor. The top of it is about 6 or 7 feet high. Our cat is 17 years old so we know she couldn't get up there. We looked up there but didn't see Kaasha (the snake). A day or so later I noticed one of our knives on the fireplace mantle. We have a brick fireplace set in a partial indoor brick wall and have various knives and swords etc displayed all over the wall. Suddenly my son says that there is Kaasha. I look up and she's up on the wall about 6 feet up, wrapped up around the handle of a replica katana sword. She was one pissed off snake. She hissed at me but didn't bite me when I took her down and put her back in her tank. It took about a month of careful handling to get her back used to us but now she's back to her sweet lovable self. We have a new tank cover of course now. One with locks.
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Veronica