just came back from vacation and found my buddy had died while I was out.

What a bummer.

He was 9 1/2 years old, and he was with me for 9 of those years.

He was a good size around 4.5' and thicker than my forearm. Never tried to bite, never snapped. Gentle as can be.

We turned down out the heat in our house to about 50 degrees (we live in Newton, MA). We thought this would be fine, since he had both an over head ceramic heater and underground external heat pad. Well...apparently, somehow both heat sources in his tank were turned off when we arrived home 13 days later. Interestingly enough, rigor had not set in yet, so I'm assuming he died within the past 24 hours.

Before we left he was "blue" and was set to shed in a few days. He had a meal in his stomach as well. He typically hibernates around this time of year--but was having the best feeding year of his life--eating a ton.

I do have 2 questions.

1) The temp in his enclosure was mid 50's. I don’t think that was cold enough to kill him (or was it?) You'd think he would just hibernate.

2) He had some very odd red coloration on him (under his skin, mostly on his stomach). Not sure what that was?

My guess is that the snake was going through some internal medical issues and the cold temp just aided in killing him.

Too late for an autopsy--I buried him this morning.

Your thoughts?

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