Crap!! What just happened!!@!$@#

Holy crap, I feel like I just had a heart attack. For those of you who don't know who Petrie is, he is my little hatchling who hasn't eaten for the two months I had him, and finally had his first meal last week. He hasn't moved since then, I checked on him once, he seemed fine, nice and warm, just not active. It was a week tonight, so I thought, let's see. Got the same size small mouse, threw it in with him, he nailed it within a minute! Awesome! All is well! No....all went really bad. He got the mouse down, but had a crap load of trouble with the, and I'm going to be graphic, mouse balls and back feet.

But he got it down, then, he starts freaking out. He's waving his face in the air, smacking it into things, he is going insane. I look at his jaws, which are almost down his throat and twisted over eachother. His windpipe is hanging out one corner and he's flailing around, trying to yawn but can't at all. I start freaking out, I run upstairs and get the son of the family I live with, wake him up, it's 3:30am here. We give it 10 minutes, he's still freaking out, he's going really limp and getting really tired and basically hardly moving. We stuck on some latex gloves, and I very, very carefully, pushed the jaws out of his throat, and untwisted them, and he yawned and realigned them.

What just happened!!!#!!@#@!$ He is weak and tired right now, he didn't throw up the mouse on us, and he's right about to shed, his eyes are completely clouded over.

But again, what the heck just happened!!!:confused: It was the same size as his first mouse which he ate just fine, but the first was a female. I know, I can't get fuzzy's and hopper's, but these are small mice, they are the size of him at the thickest part. I'm not feeding him full adults, these are still basically baby's, just past the hopper stage by a couple weeks.

How do I prevent this, he was freaking out really hardcore and I don't want him going through that again!!

Thanks for any and all help!!

Wow, I've never heard of anything like that.
Try feeding it smaller mice? Since he had troubles with the last part of swallowing?

Wow...that's pretty crazy. Good job on helping him out. Lots of people start hatchlings out on small mice. I've started most of mine out on them and never have had a problem. It may just be a fluke thing??? It was probably the last thing on your mind :O but I wish you had snapped a pic. I'm having touble picturing what you described. Give him time to recover and digest and try again. If you can, try to pick out the smallest mice. Both "pet stores" I go to for mice are good about picking out the small ones when I ask.

Omg!! :O That's insane...I haven't had any problems like that with my young BP. You did a great job figuring out what to do, I don't know if I would have been able to think clearly in that situation! I would have been so scared for my little guy!

WOW that's crazy good jumping right in there in the heat of the moment.:salute:

Congrats on helping him out, but sorry BOTH of yall had to go though that...Hope it was just a fluke and he's alright!

Basically....try and picture both his bottom jaws, literally bent into his throat on the inside, so he has no bottom half of his face basically. And then, on top of being down his throat, they were twisted together! :( It pretty much looked like he...swallowed his own jaws. I really hope this was just a fluke thing.

He came out later this morning and got a big long drink of water, his face looks okay, no swelling that I can see.

I had just told my friend how happy I was that everything was going good with him too, eating his 2nd straight meal and about to shed, and then, gfhdgoufdgodfgh he eats himself! T_T

Thanks for the support!

Sounds like one or more teeth hung up on the mouse and when he was swallowing the mouse, his jaws were going down as well. Because the jaws are so flexible, they can indeed twist in on themselves in crazy ways. Without seeing it happen, that's my best guess.

Since you supervised the feeding, you were there to correct the issue. It was probably a weird fluke, but just supervise his feedings to make sure.

Thanks, that's what I kind of thought, that his teeth got hung up on the mouse's..privates or back feet, something like that, it started happening around the "testicle" area..so I'm sticking with small females and I hope this doesn't happen again!!

I've been supervising them, just in case, I'm glad I was!

I can't wait to see him after he sheds, with one meal in he was already looking healthier, with two I'm sure he's going to start looking back to a normal baby soon :D

its feeding night and u got me all worried now! good thing u were there to save the lil guy/gal. i have had mine get their jaws bent out and down like the were sad or something. then they rub their face on the tub for a lil bit and they are fine. but nothing like what u described

Something interesting I learned on a python show I was watching last night....

The tube that was sticking out of the snakes' mouth while it was trying to eat was its windpipe. It's how the snake breathes while it eats large prey. It also has one small lung and one lung the length of its body, but I digress...

The point is, you did the right thing by being there, and able to assist. These are very hardy creatures and they are really an example of fine engineering.

Sorry that you had to go through that, it is terrifying when something like that happens during a feeding. Good job for watching and promptly reacting:gj:

Yeah, I knew he was able to breathe because his windpipe was sticking out the side but his tongue was limply flailing and he got extremely weak after 15 minutes of trying to rub his face against things and was doing something along the lines of a snake panting like a dog.

It actually wasn't very difficult to put his jaws back in place. I just had to push them gently in the right directions and when he yawned everything was okay. I didn't reach in his mouth, just pushed from the outside.

It was just super scary seeing him without the bottom half of his face!

the mouse was a lil to big for him probably but hell i havent even got mine to eat but next time u try since hes eating a f/t but i doubt it ill get a live one for mine an prays he eats:tears:

I'm going to try and find the smallest mouse I can. Our only pet store is Petco...T_T...which killed all of our other awesome pet stores which sold live fuzzies and hoppers a couple years ago...Petco gets their shipments of mice in on Wednesdays, which happens to be Petrie's feeding day, so I'm going to go every wednesday and try ad get their smallest mice, which they usually keep in the back.

Just leave the live mouse in his tank for an hour plus and he will probably get the idea.

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Originally Posted by AkHerps

Just leave the live mouse in his tank for an hour plus and he will probably get the idea.

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I have two faunariums from exo terra where I keep a hatchling in:

http://www.exo-terra.com/images/shar...narium_set.jpg

The great thing about it is that a third can be seperated with some plastic divider so you can leave the mouse in the same enclosure which then will smell quite good (especially males) and then you can remove the divider once you want to supervise the feed.

I am talking about the PT2310 here btw. - the large one with two openings

Wow that sounds crazy. Thanks for sharing that, because i have never heard of such a thing. This is my first year breeding and will be offering my second clutch their first meal soon. I will definitely be supervising. I hope I dont have to do what you described, but at least I know it is recoverable.

i ssay give him smaller prey as well ( if need to st start getting them off a breeder or breed own ) I think being so mall it possible the jaw bones are weak or have been broken to the point when you fed this time they reborke adnd that caused the twisiting of them as ate. ( but that only a possible ideal)

I don't think they broke, his face would have shown swelling.

Just fed him an even smaller mouse than the first one he ate, he had a little trouble, tried to do it butt first haha, then got it down head first, it looked like his jaws were going to do the same thing, but he got it down normally and is doing good!! :D :D