BP injury...need some help.

My cousin used duct tape to hold down the newpaper in his BP's tank because he kept getting under it. He came home tonight to find duct tape stuck down one side of the snake. When he tried to pull the tape off it pulled about a half inch piece of skin off of the snake. He called me to come help but we're not sure what to do now. We left the rest of the tape on the snake because we're afraid of making it worse.
Any ideas of how to get the tape off without hurting the snake more? How should we care for the open wound?

Soak in warm water and try to gently peel if it still is pulling skin soak again WARM water!

Good luck!
-Payson!

I actually found that olive oil works better then water. :P

GL I'm not sure how to treat the actual sore....

with something that bad, sutures would minimize the cosmetic damage. open areas are gonna scab over form scars/distorted plates/scales.

So far: we've cut off the tape that wasn't directly sticking to his body and let him soak in warm water for about an hour, but the tape is still too strong and will pull more skin off if we try again. We had thought about veg or olive oil but we're afraid it might hurt him. Until we figure out what to do, we put triple antibotic on the wound and put him back in the tank. We thought that it might be best to leave the tape alone until it falls off by itself but I don't know how long that might take.

the triple antibiotic should loosen up the tape - glob it up all over the tape (make sure your using clear triple not white) I would never use any oils around open wounds (mineral oil before any other) good luck. :gj: I trust you'll never use tape again. I learned the hard way with tape and reptiles in 2000. Now i avoid it like the plague.

keep the snake in closed quarters using papertowels as substrate as you would a neonate and keep the tape lubed and i trust it will let loose (osmosis effect)

Will the snake not just shed eventually? Do you need to intervene?

We wasn't as worried about the tape as we were the open wound. We thought the tape might just come off on it's own after awhile. The wound isn't very big so we were debating whether we could treat it ourselves with the triple antibotic or if a vet might be needed.

Alright, I hope you learned the lesson of no tape in a snakes reach now.

Mineral oil or vegetable oil should not harm the snake, just try to avoid getting a large amount in the wound and you should be fine.
You need to get that tape off.

Put some non-pain killer neosporin on the wound for now, and stop soaking the snake in water, it's not very good for the wound.
Can you take a picture? We can tell you if it requires a vet visit or not.

Also, I figure I might address this a little bit now. You cannot avoid the snake from getting under the newspaper. This could be because you are not providing appropriate hides for him or he just prefers the newspaper cover. Either way, it is his way of hiding and feeling secure so you should not attempt to take that away from him.
Ball pythons are not display animals, they want to hide 24/7.

Good luck!