Urgent ! Piece of bark in snake's mouth !!

Help peeps !!

Fed my Albino Royal in her viv but on a piece of card so wouldn't get any orchid bark down her throat but after the mouse had gone down I noticed she was opening her mouth continuously , after a close look with the help of a torch I could clearly see a small piece of bark stuck on the top of her mouth ( inside) .

I guess snakes get all kinds of dirt and bits down their throat when they feed in the wild .....just slightl concerned.

is it large and stuck?

I figure the snake will either swallow it or regurge.

q-tips. Use one q-tip sideways to push her nose up and wedge between her jaws. Then use a second to fish the piece out. A second person holding her may help if she's not used to the q-tip treatment (mine are used to the q-tip oral checks, but they did a lot of squirming first time.)

Edit: You might want to use tweezers or a coffee stir stick to fish the bark out, actually, since q-tips can shred on python teeth. And then you've got cotton AND bark in there.

It's only a very small piece , under half an inch long and just stuck with saliva in the top of her mouth. She just looked in a bit of discomfort.

I think they can digest small pieces of junk, but 1/2 inch is a little on the big side. But mostly I can't stand watching them fret when it's stuck in there--I actually cut my finger fishing a piece out of my het pied's mouth with my finger, because he was kind of freaking out.

Not to worry. She'll spit it out. It may take a little while, but she will. And I doubt she'll regurge. Snakes get all manner of stuff in their mouths and manage. It's true its not ideal and good for you for using the cardboard, but I really wouldn't worry about this little piece. I've had Ella end up with a mouthful and she was fine. They get pretty creative in spitting out the pieces, lol... ;)

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Originally Posted by Evenstar

They get pretty creative in spitting out the pieces, lol... ;)

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That sounds like the beginning of a very interesting Ball Python story :P

I'd probably end up grabbing it with small set of hemostats...

i use plantation soil in my tanks sometimes they get debris in there mouths but one doesnt care, one yawns it out and the other girl spits out a ball of it after 10 mins or so.

Your snake should be fine if she yawns and keeps up her un happy mood then your can always get it out or flush it with water but not a tap lol with a mister or us your plastic coated forcepts to get ti outt and save yourself a finger lol.

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Originally Posted by nachash

That sounds like the beginning of a very interesting Ball Python story :P

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Hahaha! Yes, there is a story behind that...

Ella pounded her mouse one night so fast, that I dropped it out of surprise. As a result, she missed it on the first strike and it landed in the cypress mulch bedding. Since I feed f/t, it was slightly damp so it got pretty covered in mulch. Well, I wasn't reaching in there to retrieve it as Ella was still hunting, lol, and she went after it anyhow. Once she'd swallowed it, her mouth looked like she'd had an argument with a porcupine with pieces of mulch sticking out all over the place. I didn't figure there was really anything I could do so I decided to keep an eye on her for the evening and see if she was able to spit it all out on her own.

She managed to get most out within the next 10-20min or so, but one piece was stubborn - stuck up in the roof of the mouth kind of like the op's snake except there was one end sticking out from the corner of her mouth. As I watched, after much rubbing and yawning, she finally twisted around and positioned her head against the corner of her hide box. She did this very deliberately. Once she caught the end of the piece of mulch on the edge of her hide, she opened her mouth and flicked her head backwards and out popped the mulch!

I've never witnessed anything like that before! And it proved to me that every living creature operates on its own level of intelligence. They may not be on the same level as us humans, but in some ways, they may be even smarter! I know better than to underestimate Ella again!

Thanks everyone !

I know most people say there's no need for it, but I feed my snakes outside of their enclosures. I feed the python separately because his substrate is cypress bark, and honestly my boa is only fed outside because I broadcast it on a webcam that's only hooked up to my desktop. She's on plantation soil so once I get a laptop webcam, I'll keep her in the tank. Not gonna bother when she's 9 ft long XD