it's official - I think Carmen has mites =(

I've never baked the aspen I buy from dear ole Wally World but we do bake the cypress mulch we buy from Home Depot for the big boa (he gets a mix of cypress mulch and aspen). The cypress tends to be packed damp anyways to a good slow bake in the oven dries it out properly and kills any buggie hitchhikers (well so far it has...*knock wood*)

Also quite fun to have the kids doing the usual "what's for dinner" whine and showing them the lovely cypress mommy has slaved over all day just for them. :giggle:

After reading more, I'm not gonna bake the aspen - just the mulch. =)

Okay, de-miting report:

We went ahead and made it a cleaning day for both girls (Cleo was due), so we cleaned and disinfected Cleo's cage first. Diluted bleach soapy water, scrub scrub scrub rinse rinse rinse air air air, etc. Cleo seemed miffed but hey, gotta do it. Got her tucked back into her squeaky clean viv and moved onto mite-y girl. =P

Moved Carmen out of her viv and into a holding tub (on top of fluffy bath towel wrapped around human heatin pad that we check every 15 minutes with a temp gun). While Rick scooped out and vacuumed the viv, I scrub scrub srubbed everything in diluted beach soapy water with water as hot as our tap will go, we pitched the plants we had and the repti-carpet that we original planned to reuse when we bought them (2 per cage, one in use, one washed ready to go).

Rinsed the cage real good and did ZooMed wipe out after on the cage and surrounding lamps (read on some website today to clean the nearby lamps as mite poopy heads go for heat). Once the ZooMed wipe was done and the cage for ready, I trundled Carmen to another closed room downstairs with the Reptile Relief and a new disposable kitchen cloth while Rick Provent-a-Mited the cage (outside windows open, fan going, cats locked downstairs).

We waited until the PAM had been settling for 30-45 minutes and then I worked on Carmen (poor scared thing). The label on the RR bottle says to either spray directly on or spray onto a cloth and then wipe - we went for the second method. Sprayed the cloth until it was good and moist then removed Carmen and forced her to slither through the cloth in my hand. Several mites (and oh yes, little bitty black things - definitely mites from the pictures I've seen) were left on the cloth. Gently coaxed through a few times and then made sure to get under her chin - *not* a happy camper.

Since her holding box had several visible mites in it (alive? dead? dunno...the box is now sitting in hot bleach water in the sink), I walked her upstairs, Rick brought the water bowl up (not in the room when he PAM'ed) and we put her in her viv. Substrate: brand new Repti-Carpet and then a single layer of pure white flannel fabric (we were afraid Carmen would rip through the paper towel over the temp probes and I have tons of fabric).

Just checked on her and I can see several dead (hopefully) mites on the flannel. She's checking out the viv and I would guess is still pretty stressed, but stressed for a bit has got to be better than mites. =P

So, moral of the store: Don't get mites on a very speckley snake because you can never seen the dang things. =P

Keep your fingers crossed for us that we got them all. Oh, and going to wait for a days before feeding her.

Sounds like you guys are doing the best you can to get her sorted out. Sorry you got stuck with mites but seems you are on top of it. I can't imagine if Ruari got mites! With all his speckles we'd likely never seen the dang things either.


:skullbone DEATH TO ALL MITES (AND THEIR EVIL FRIENDS...TICKS!):skullbone