Thought my ball python had died....

[chris B]

My snake has been starting to shed *eye's turned blue etc* so I decided to up the humidity, sprayed about 2 hours ago humidity at 66% everything fine.
Well come back about 2 minutes ago to find my snake in the front of the tub, with his head SIDEWAYS and mouth open . After the shock set in for a few minutes, I figured the worst had happened. So I open the tub, go to grab him out and he quickly balls up and SCARES the HELL out of me, after I caught myself for a minute and settled down I got a huge grin on my face. Guess he was just takin a nap lol.

Anyone ever have this happen to them?

[Sausage]

You might want to take him to the vet... an open mouth can potentially mean an RI. :eek: At least open his mouth with a q-tip and see if it looks mucousy.

[JLC]

I'm very glad he wasn't dead! But I would definitely take Anna's advice and look for a vet to take him to asap. I've never heard of a healthy snake laying like that. An RI (respiratory infection) is very treatable and they can recover....but left untreated, they are almost always eventually fatal.

[chris B]

Well I kinda went off the end with the open mouth part, it was more kinda cracked a lil bit. He has not signs of off pattern breathing or any mucus anywhere.

[JLC]

Well, no one can diagnose over the Internet. It's up to you to decide if you're concerned enough to take her to the vet or not. What you described doesn't sound normal to me and it would make ME concerned....that's all I'm saying.

[chris B]

Oh I agree with you 100% I just didnt want to make it seem like his mouth was WIDE open.

[bearhart]

I've never seen the mouth thing but I have had a very similar experience to yours. When Snakey sheds he camps out in his water dish solid for like a week. He looks absolutely pitiful.

So, I have his water dish on the warm side and partly covered so he can safely soak and feel relatively secure. When he does his big soak-a-thons I pretty much leave him alone but check on him regularly.

This last shed he would say in the water an not move AT ALL and have his head submerged to where only his nostrils were above the water. One day I peeked in on him and his head was laying sideways. It looked like at least one of his nostrils was above the water but I had never seen him with his head sideways before. I was cool but starting to get a bit nervous. I called out his name and tapped on the glass - nothing. Little more nervous. I opened the top of his cage and lifted the cover off of his dish. He didn't move AT ALL and he always starts to tense up a bit when I open the top. I was really scared then. I called his name and reached in an gently touched his body with my finger and BAM! he suddenly tenses up and contracts in the dish. He was clearly sleeping and go startled. He didn't strike or anything but he scared the CR*P out of me!

He turned out to be fine.