lost and found success stories

[mandalorian]

I'm pretty sure most of us from the experienced breeder to your everyday hobbyist/collector have had a bp or 2 gone missing. Wanted to hear your war stories and how they escaped and when/where they were found so we can learn to prevent this from happening.
My adult normal got out while I was cleaning his enclosure. For over 2 weeks I placed a f/t rat in the middle of the room at night and sat and wait. He finally slithered out from under an entertainment system. Most recently, my baby lesser got out after my 9 yr old son didn't secure his lid. I really thought he was a goner because he was so young. Well, 2 weeks later I came home from work and found him by the garage entry door. Amazing how they pop up when you least expect them to. Good thing I found him before my better half did.

[P.m.holland]

I had a hatchling corn snake disappeared during cage cleaning last week. As I was searching I spotted wormlike movement in my retic's cage. Sure enough, there she was. Eagerly exploring this new vast cage while Apollo, my tiger retic, completely ignored her. I got lucky.

[pigfat]

I got a call from my sister "my parents wont let me keep it at my house " and she said "Get your butt over here, your snake is out." So I get dressed really quick and driver over there so about 5 minutes has lapsed. I get in the house and asked her where it was and she replied "I dont know?" I said "You didn't watch him?!" So I spend about 3 hours turning over every box in the house. I finally went to work and then came back at lunch with a nice live mouse and baby powder. I put the mouse in a tanki in the middle of the room and decided to put baby powder along all the doorways so I could see if he was moving...the LAST doorway left was the bathroom and after I had covered it in powder, I looked up to see Julius just laying in the bathroom floor. I was excited and frustrated at the same time becasue I then had to clean up all that powder for nothing!

[Tzeentch]

2 weeks ago my female spider got out when I left the door open after changing the water dish.

I didnt realize the door was open until the next day.

She was found in the closet, on the top shelf actually. I thought that was strange that she climbed up the vacumn, the hangers and onto the top shelf.

I would have never looked on the shelf if it was not for the things I had noticed she knocked off the shelf.

[adamjeffery]

a few of mine from my younger days.
i was about 11 and caught 5 garter snakes. my mom said i had to take them and let them go outside. well i snuck upstairs and put them in my dresser. a couple hours later went to check on them and they were all gone...surprise surprise...lol
spent hours pulling my room apart with my mom, step dad and neighbor. found all 5 and let them go out back.

as an older but non experienced keeper i had a baby corn escape. searched for a solid week straight with no luck. then a month later my wife starts doing dishes then screams. she had grabbed a wash cloth and started scrubbing a pan when all of a sudden the wash cloth started moving in her hand. the snake was in the wash cloth un-harmed and bigger than when he escaped.

then not too long ago i had accidentally left a hatchling ball tub open. came home and started searching all over. found snake across the room 5 tubs up in a adult rack behind a tub on the heat strip.

thankfully its been years (except for the hatchling ball) since i have had any housing problems where snakes actually escaped and disappeared
adam jeffery

[Kinra]

My butter was the first to escape and she got out because there was too much of a gap between her tub and the rack. I spent an entire week looking for her, staying up late, leaving rat pups out and searching every where. Just as I was giving up hope on finding her relatively quickly I happened to hear some noise coming from under my kitchen sink. She had gotten stuck in a stick mouse trap my apartment complex puts down every year. It was pretty horrifying to find her like that. Half her face of was stuck to it and her mouth was stuck open. I got her off with a little cooking oil and put a lid on her tub. She's been doing fine.

My second escape was my cinny. She got the lid off her tub and managed to escape. Since she's in my QT room I only check on them every few days so I had no idea how long she had been missing. I noticed she was missing as I was feeding. I decided to ignore the fact that she was missing and continue feeding everyone first. No sense panicking when she could have been missing for days already. Turns out that was a good move because I found her under the rack. She was directly under the last snake I went to feed.

I plan on building/buying (haven't decided which yet) new racks early next year so hopefully I won't have any more escapes.

[Munizfire]

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...day.&p=1694420
There is my story... LOL




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[SHROP]

I had a baby KSB get out when i moved her to a 6qt tub. I guess the holes i drilled in it were just slightly too big. She had not been eating and i was going to be bringing her to a friend to see if she could help. Went to get the snake and she was gone! i looked everywhere. I even layed down some not so sticky tape to see if i could catcher her leaving the closet i built my rack into. nothing.... 2 weeks later my girlfriend was doing laundry in the basement and she stepped JUST right and between her toes were a little warm, put the laundry basket down and there she was. about 4" long and she made it all the way through the house down a set of stairs and into a room that has a boxer/pit mix in it and survived. After i got her set back up in a tub i got a good look at her and she had lost a TON of weight. I grabbed a live mouse pink and put it in the next day and she ate it! I think being out on her own scared some sense into her. She hasn't missed a meal since!

I try to take every precaution to secure my animals and clean with my g/f so we have two sets of eyes on everything. In the cold winters i have my outdoor cat inside. He WILL attack a small snake so i would be afraid of anything getting out.. (he already tries to get my sun conure Webster)

[lasweetswan]

Meatball got out of his tub once. I tore my entire house apart looking for him and could not find him anywhere. Finally, we found him inside of the wall where he had crawled through a hole that should have been covered by a wall plug in unit, but was not. In fact, I still don't know why the plug in thing wasn't on the wall. Anyway, the hole was just big enough for my hand to fit in and I tried to grab him but fighting a 4 lb muscle with only your hand is nearly impossible! He managed to find another hole inside of the hole he was already in and went inside of that. I had to all kinds of mirroring and flashlighting to find out where he had gone. When I realized he went into a smaller hole and there was no way to get him from where I was, I started drilling into the other side of the wall. That scared him back into the original space and I stuck my hand back in the hole to grab him and sure enough, he found ANOTHER hole opposite of the second of that he had crawled into and crawled into that one. From there, he went into a FOURTH hole inside of the wall. I ended up drilling 5 holes in the wall until I finally found him. Inside the wall, inside of a hole inside of the wall, inside of another hole, which was behind the closet of a completely different room from where he escaped.

Here's the thread:

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...t-of-a-problem....

[mandalorian]

Great war stories. Getting a wealth of info on what to do/not do when dealing with our bps,