Re: Ever have one of THOSE days....
I literally wanted to just crawl under something and die. I still do. But I don't see how it is physically possible to ship a snake in winter. How can one heat the box so that it'll be safe in temperatures from 20 degrees farenheit, to.. who knows what they let it get up to? I marked on the box for them to keep it between 60-75 degrees..
I don't know how hot they let it get. I do know that they actually left it on your doorstep for three hours in the freezing temps. Sadly, because they did that, I think that the snake would have died regardless. When I read that they left it on your doorstep, I literally wanted to strangle the fedex person!! I thought that if no one was home, they had a heated place at their facility where they kept the package until the recipient was able to pick them up. I had the heatpacks set up to be safe from 60-75 degrees. I strongly suspect that maybe they even meant well, and put him too close to a heater, and the temps probably just skyrocketed from there.
I just did what I thought was right, and am still not even sure where things went wrong or what I could have done to prevent it. If I had heated it less, the snake for sure would have died, being out in the cold for a few hours. I put newspaper in between the heatpacks and the box as instructed, and used the correct amount as per the site instructions to ehat a 1 square foot box. I am just fed up with myself, fedex, and the world. I am even considering never even shipping snakes again.. Why do people do it every day and then I go and do it once and this happens??
After this happened, I emailed 4 breeders who ship often (I don't want to state them; they might not have replied for their own personal reasons.) No one replied with any thoughts on this at all.