justified blame for "killing" friends young ball python?

[Ba11er]

the road to hell is paved with good intentions. People are protective of their pets, its usually best to try and give advice but to not take action yourself without permission. It sounds like you meant well but because the animal died your roommate is going to want to place the blame on you. Weather or not it was your fault or someone elses this is a good lesson to learn.

Hope your roommate situation does not go sour because of this but if you have the cash buying another snake would go a long way to mend the relationship. Make sure you have good husbandry first !

[tattoovendetta]

This. Now that said...
- If this critter was sold by PetSmart it likely wasn't in the best of health to begin with. We don't know if it was eating well when they purchased it.
- We do not know if the snake was set up correctly, especially for heat and humidity. We don't know if the snake wasn't eating because it was stressed, because it hadn't been well started, or because it was too cold. If your roommate bought the equipment based on the recommendation on the PetSmart employee it likely was not in a good setup.
- The snake hadn't eaten in two months.

Given all of that I very much doubt that the OP's assist feeding killed the snake. Assist feeding is recommended as a last resort but I've had a few breeders suggest sometimes people wait too long, and they wait so long that the critter is debilitated to the point that it physically can't digest the meal. This may have been such a case.
At any rate OP I doubt that you broke the snake's neck if it survived for several days after you fed it.

The pancake batter paste may have been Carnivore Care, which is often tube fed to a severely malnourished reptile.

I appreciate the information. I had mentioned to the roommate that a better hide should be in there. A note I forgot to mention was they bought the enclosure from a friend who's BP also died.
with it not being my pet, I didn't have any real say.
I also know that they handled the snake a dozen times or so since they bought it.
Again I'm not asking to point blame, I just felt their might have been other events involved. Not the best feeling in the world to be told you killed someone's pet.

[tattoovendetta]

the road to hell is paved with good intentions. People are protective of their pets, its usually best to try and give advice but to not take action yourself without permiss. It sounds like you meant well but because the animal died your roommate is going to want to place the blame on you. Weather or not it was your fault or someone elses this is a good lesson to learn.

Hope your roommate situation does not go sour because of this but if you have the cash buying another snake would go a long way to mend the relationship. Make sure you have good husbandry first !

I would call my bottle of liquor I picked up in Germany coming back from my second deployment, that I was saving for a special occasion, being poured over my bed while I was gone a bit souring. But yes, I should have stayed out of it.

[IsmQui718]

As mentioned by others, force feeding is a last resort and is often not necessary. Non feeding BP are usually a direct result of improper husbandry. BP MUST have all their needs met properly if you want them to eat. Mouse pinkies are not a good food choice for BP.

IF the snake's neck was broken like your roommate claims, then necropsy is the way to go. HOWEVER, It's important to understand that necropsies are ideally done in roughly 24 hours on an animal that had deceased. Anything longer than that can prove to be difficult, as autolysis (decomposition) runs its course.

It's really hard to tell what truly happened as there are a lot of variables here (one side of story, health of snake at pet smart, etc). HOWEVER, if your roommate's BP suffer cervical dislocation (medical lingo for broken neck), then the snake would have died immediately. In fact, that's considered an acceptable form of euthanasia for snakes up to a certain size.

Re: vet: it sounds like that vet was not a herp vet or at least one that was knowledgable on BP.

Now if the snake had a blockage as your roommate claims, then it would have had to see a herp vet regardless.

This is a case where both parties are at fault. Probably not what you want to hear. Use this experience as a lesson learned for next time. Before acquiring ANY animal, people need to do their research on the species they are looking to acquire.


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[blk02ssmonte]

I appreciate the information. I had mentioned to the roommate that a better hide should be in there. A note I forgot to mention was they bought the enclosure from a friend who's BP also died.

It might have been an issue from that BP that the enclosure was not properly cleaned.