opening their mouths?

i've read stuff on here before about how people had to check for substrate in their snakes mouths... they actually open them up. im just curious, dont the snakes try to bite you? i dont know how Pandora would react if i tried prying open her mouth. im not sure i'd pull my hand away in one piece! :)

so whats the secret?

Personally, I have never had a good reason to forcibly open my snakes mouth, however, as I watch him eat I will watch to be sure he doesn't get any stuck. He has a few times, but only a small amount. You can see this when the BP attempts to re-allign its jaws after a meal. Plus his defecation and urine excretion are right on schedule.... I must get high fiber rats from RodentPro :)

If by maybe checking they meant they watched while the snake swallowed prey to see if any was stuck to the mouse/rat fur and ingested that way I could see that - but any situation where you have substrate fine enough that you'd need to check I'd think feeding on another surface or in a substrate-free container would do better - or maybe even a change of substrate.

hmmm well once it was checking in their mouth for something have to do with an RI... i dont remember who said it, but they clearly said they looked inside their mouth. haha i dont know.. it just struck me as odd that some one could actually do that.

i did nothing wrong, dont worry.. Pandora's not choking on substrate or anything. it was just a question i never asked :)

My snake got a peice of repti bark stuck in his mouth, before I started feeding him in a diff. cage. It was bad. I had to get him to strike at the mouse again, so it would get unstuck. He had a nasty injury though. And people do check for RI's by opening the mouth. With a credit card or something...I've never done it though.

A mouse nose typically works pretty well for prying a mouth open. :)

I've opened Norbert's mouth, mostly just to give medication. It was with a syringe(not the needle kind). It took many times of trying before I got the hang of how to do it. First you need to get a firm but gentle hold behind their head so they can't try to squirm away. Then you gently force whatever it is into their mouth to get it open. In my case it was a syringe. You put it right at the very front of its mouth. I just sort of twisted it while applying a little pressure (very gently!) until his mouth opened. You would need to use something more than that though to keep the mouth open though. I've never heard of using a credit card.

Anyway, I never got bit doing that. Norbert, while not a happy camper, was really a trooper. Never even hissed at me, poor little guy.

Edit: By the way, I only tried this after my vet showed me how to do it.

I thought the credit card thing was a bit much. But, I read that somewhere. Might have been in my little book. Dunno. No no, they used a Q-Tip in the book. I think it would be really hard to open their mouth with one of those though. O_o

Actually, I think a Q-tip is a good idea. Then once you have its mouth open you can turn the Q-Tip long ways(sideways?) to keep the mouth open. I wouldn't really know till I tried it though.

Q-tips work very good, snip the cotton off one end with a pair a scissors so you dont have any of it getting hung in their teeth