Hi. I am not a ball python owner myself, but my best friend is, and I have an issue that's come up that I figure would be best directed here.

Over a break from college, my best friend was staying at my house, and chilling out in my basement with her ball pythons. Now, the basement itself isn't the warmest of places in the world, but there wasn't much other choice for places to go. thankfully, we managed to keep her babies warm during her stay.

However, we had an issue crop up about a day or two ago--Her mojave morph escaped from its tank. Naturally, we freaked out at the realization and started ripping the basement apart as much as possible. There's a lot of junk and clutter down here in which the snake could hide, but after hours of checking every possible place and pertty much emptying the entire basement, there was no sign of the little one.

Now, there's a problem here. My friend had to return to college from her break, and unfortunately, wasn't able to find her snake in time. The responsibility of locating the little one falls on me, now, and I turn to these forums for help. As I said, the basement itself isn't the warmest place in the world, and I live in the northern regions of the United States--Meaning it's not liable to get warmer any time soon, and from what I understand.. That makes finding her as soon as possible rather imperative.

We've looked everywhere we could in the basement--The logical thought was for her to curl up around the water heater or the furnace, or possibly inside them.. But after checking them as thoroughly as we could, there was no sign of the critter. We'd ripped through every box down here, even going so far as to move the boxes upstairs one by one while we searched, and there was no sign of the snake.

I really am beginning to get worried. I don't want to see the little lovey wind up dead, and any help in locating her in as hopefully swift a fashion as possible would be greatly appreciated. I've got an idea to possibly pick up a mouse from the local pet store as bait, but is there anything that could be done to further enhance the chances of drawing her out? The weather's slated to get colder yet in the next couple days, and I'm scared of what might happen if I don't find her soon.

I think the snake is around five or six months old, but I could be wrong regarding the age. If that information helps out any, then please take that into account.

Please, any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

As a last note, I'd like to throw out a question--What's the likelihood that a snake might crawl into an open drainage pipe? Water flows through it regularly from further up in the house, and it's not a warm place at all. It is dark, but it's also not very tight an area. All of this leads me to think she probably didn't hide in there, but I still wonder about the possibility she did.

Again, thanks for any and all help. If nothing else, any hope sent out for finding the little one is good.