My BP died inexplicably and I'm crushed... any ideas?

So sorry for your loss. That is terrible! We lost an African Fat tailed gecko to an impaction and per the vet there was nothing that we could do about it. We tried everything for over a month (laxatives, assisted liquid feeding and all and nothing helped) it was devestating for our 8 y/o

I am so sorry for your loss. :(

When I first looked at the picture, I was thinking along the lines of many other posters, and maybe similar to what Tosha already stated. It doesn't look to me like the Aspen passed through the digestive system. It also doesn't appear to me that Aspen just got stuck to the cloacal opening. The first thing I thought was that the snake may have prolapsed, and sucked the Aspen back up into the cloaca when the prolapse retracted. However, none of that explains the mysterious death. After reading through the entire thread, I can see nothing that gives any clues to the cause of death. As most of the other posters stated, if you are concerned with the rest of your collection, and/or what more answers, a necropsy is definitely in order.

Make sure you do not freeze the animal, as it may destroy vital information for the vets. Also, set up an appointment as soon as possible, to avoid any further possible deterioration of the animal.

Sorry for your loss, it is always hard. I hope this helps in some way.

muddoc, actually that makes perfect sense. I was wondering why there would be a bloody piece of aspen that still looked like it hadn't passed through his system. I had no answers at all, but that makes perfect sense. Thanks a lot.

And thanks everyone for your concern. I really do appreciate it. I have scheduled a necropsy and I will be dropping him off at 4 today. He has been in the refrigerator all night and still is. They'll be able to look at him tomorrow, then hopefully I'll get some answers.

sorry for your loss keep us informed.

Very sorry to hear about this, he was a beautiful spider :tears: Let us know what the vet says, hopefully it's just a fluke thing and the rest of the collection is not in danger.

what did you find out?

I am so sorry for your loss. I know how it feels to lose a snake I lost a boa in a freak accident. I was trying to find ways blame myself it seems as well. We just have to accept that if we do our best to take care of them and an accident happens we have to try to accept it. He looks just like my spider. If I have any spider clutches this year I will let you know. Maybe I can send one your way. Again sorry for your loss.

So the vet took a day off on the day she was supposed to do the necropsy because her kid was sick apparently. But I got the results back yesterday.

She said she can't really make heads or tails of it because she found several slight abnormalities but nothing that should've killed him without warning. I'm sending tissue samples away to get them run through the battery of tests, just because I have to know and I have to keep my others safe.

The results:
1) He had two tiny strange lumps on his back near his tail that the vet said were caused by some sort of developmental injury or sickness (before I got him- either very very young or still in the egg), but shouldn't have been a serious problem.
2) His heart was a little bigger than normal, but she couldn't think of anything that that would cause. Just for completeness sake, she told me absolutely everything.
3) He had the very very beginnings of a respiratory infection (probably from when the stupid power went out for 5 days straight citywide last month and I had to do my best to keep them warm with body heat and makeshift heat pads out of glove warmers.) But it was so mild that he didn't even show any symptoms of it at all. He never laid funny or kept his mouth open, he didn't make any unusual sounds, there was nothing unusual about his mouth, etc. It was just the very start of a normal treatable respiratory infection that hadn't progressed at all, thus shouldn't have killed him.
4) He had a pancreatic cyst, and she said that those are caused by parasites or disease- hence why I'm having the tissue tests done. Because that's the most likely clue.
5) His liver had a little bit of discoloration that she found slightly odd, but it looked still functional, just a little strange.

She concluded that she thinks that he was a carrier of something that he didn't show symptoms for. I've been obsessively watching the rest of my collection for any strange signs of anything at all. Unfortunately, two of them are shedding, so they're acting a little grumpy and lethargic anyway and I can't tell the difference. I've obsessively cleaned and washed everything, and I wash my hands every time I touch them now. But none of the others are showing any symptoms of anything yet. Here's hoping.

There are two details that I didn't mention in the first post. One is, he stopped eating for about a month awhile ago. I don't remember the exact dates, but I do know that he had eaten 4 times between when he was off feed and when he died. He ate a mouse 4 times, each about once a week between then and now. So there's that, but I think I can explain it. I think he was just a little stressed out because he didn't like his hide situation. He was a bit of a picky snake, and once I gave him a new and better hide, he started eating again that week.

Also, I forgot the single behavior change that I had noticed because I didn't think anything of it at the time. He had started the past month or so to, instead of alternating between his two hides on the warm and cool side, alternate between his warm hide and wrapping himself around his water bowl. To be fair, it was probably comfortable because he could wedge himself between the bowl and two sides of the tank, so he probably felt hidden anyway. But he had never done that before, and I would often find him curled up around it. That was the only symptom or behavior change that I can think of. If anyone can think of any negative reason that a yearling male would do this, let me know.

So... yeah. I told them to send the tissue samples away, and they're going to run a battery of tests on them. Hopefully I'll find out for sure what happened soon. I don't know how long it's going to take to get results though.

*hugs*

I hope they figure out what happened soon :(