Witnessing a shed for the very first time!

[Patricia]

We brought li'l BP home 3 weeks ago, and he's going through his very first shed here this very moment! It's so exciting to witness!

I can see a bit of it through the door of his hide, and it looks like a slow motion carousel and sounds like raspy paper. Looks like his head is going one way, rubbing against his body going the other way.

Will be interesting to see later how it came off. Wow!

[joshn6805]

Congratulations on witnessing your first shed!!

[Patricia]

Well, not just the first shed I'm ever seeing, but also the first snake poop. Does shedding and pooping/peeing usually happen all at the same time?

After what looked like strenuous work inside the hide for an hour, I thought it strange that Patriot came out and wasn't going back in. Only after I shone a flashlight into it did I see the poop. Holy cow, the snake went from 160g to 130g after that thing came out! Good thing it was visible and that I'm still up to clean everything. All the newspaper layers were wet too, so there must've been a lot of pee. And right on top of the UTH, too (stress cracks?).

Yesterday his eyes were opaque/blue and he never uncoiled from the ball he was in while I held him. This morning I lifted his hide up to check his eyes (clear) and he immediately S-shaped quite aggressively, completely opposite of yesterday. But right now he didn't mind my picking him up and putting him into a temporary container while I quickly disposed of all the ick and laid fresh newspaper inside. His shed isn't coming off whole, even though the humidity has been above 60% this past week or so.

This is all quite fascinating!

[Lolo76]

It's pretty cool, huh? I witnessed my first shed recently, and it was much like you described - a slow carousel in his hide, LOL. And from what I've heard on the boards (plus my own observations), it does seem they tend to poop/pee and shed all at once. The snake equivalent of a spa day?

[Patricia]

The snake equivalent of a spa day?

If that's a spa, I'd hate to see what a hard day is like! Heck, while watching the torturous merry-go-round, it looked more like going into labor than anything else. And after seeing ALL THAT SOAKING NEWSPAPER, it seemed like water breaking, LOL! (Shoot, with the size of that poop compared to the size of the snake, it probably did feel like labor and birthing!)

[Patricia]

This is how I first found Patriot that night. Had I not been expecting a shed any moment or known what was going on, I think I would've screamed! (I think that circular eye cap is pretty neat!)




Here he is, out and not going back in. You can just see the poop by the tip of his tail. Actually, he seems to be looking directly at the area he peed in! "Do I really want to go back in there?" (Ignore the inaccurate Petco hygrometer...)


This was the real humidity reading at the time (I took the picture for future reference):

[Danounet]

Nice! I havent seen a shed yet My little pastel is in the blue now. I hope I dont miss it this time