Perfect shed! Woo-hoo!

[heatherhead42]

Sammy was a busy guy last night. Found his skin wadded up in a ball inside the cool-side hide (which happens to be one of those "edible huts" they sell in the rodent section of the petstore--very rough-textured). Looks like he spun himself in circles until it all came off.

I stretched it out, and it looks totally complete. Torn at the neck where, I assume, he started the shed. There's an opening for his mouth, both eye caps are in place. There's an opening at the cloaca, but otherwise no gaps. Just perfect. Go, Sammy!

And I can already see how much more relaxed he is. During his shed, you could see how tensely balled up he was inside his hide. He didn't come out at night at all as far as we could tell--the only difference between night and day was whether you could see his nose if you showed a flashlight into his hide, lol. Now he's kind of spread out more inside the hide, with his body partly sticking out the opening. I suspect he'll come out and explore when it gets dark tonight. Or maybe at least stick his head part way out of his hide, lol, which is a wildly adventurous thing to do.

So, he's eaten and he's shed with us. Now if he can just spend enough time between sheds and eating, we might get to handle him a bit! LOL

Heather

[TheDude]

Lol you got the Tiki Hut!!!! I been thinking about getting one of those.

Grats on the shed!

[heatherhead42]

Thanks, Dude! The tiki hut was actually Sammy's first hide (until we brought him home, we weren't sure what size snake we were getting, so we didn't have a second hide until the next day). It was straight out of my mousie toy bin, lol. It still smelled of mouse, and you could see him looking for food as he glided into it, tongue flicking steadily.

I think it looks good in the tank, and it's just the right size for now.

Heather

[junko]

Congratulations! How cool is that?!?

[heatherhead42]

Thanks! We're tickled!

By the way, he is (rather, *was*) almost exactly two feet long.

[junko]

Thanks! We're tickled!

By the way, he is (rather, *was*) almost exactly two feet long.

Is that by measuring his shed skin? I thought it stretches so it's not an accurate method of estimating size?

[tigerlily]

Is that by measuring his shed skin? I thought it stretches so it's not an accurate method of estimating size?

That's correct. The shed is roughly 10% larger than the actual snake.

Congrats on the perfect shed. Although any shed that I don't have to help with, I consider perfect. You can now start your collection of sheds that you just have to keep. They're great to let your kids take into show and tell, or while they are learning about reptiles in school.

[heatherhead42]

Thanks for the feedback! That hadn't occurred to me about the skin stretching. So I guess we can estimate that he's about 21-22 inches then, right? That sounds about right, and we're not worried about an exact measure, so it's close enough for us.

Thanks for the congrats. The skin is pretty cool--definitely going in the "permanent files."

[frankykeno]

Congrats on the nice shed Heather! There is a program here called The Snake Measurer that's pretty nifty to use. It isn't perfect and I'd suggest you take three pics, measure them all and take the average as a slight change in camera angle can throw off the reading. In the end though the best way to know for sure is simply run a thin string along the spine of the snake, following his natural curves and just measure the string.