Everyone Makes Mistakes! How Did You Find Your Lost Snake??? xD

Hello fellow snake enthusiasts!Every single snake keeper can call themselves experieced when they have found there lost or escaped snake. Even good snake keepers could actually make a small mistake and BOOM! His/her snake is gone...for a mean time of course haha

Snakes especially the pythons can be very big and slow but they can also be very skillful and sly with their escape. But if you lost your snake recently, this is the right thread to give you an idea where to find your "lost boy".

Question : Where and how did you find your "escaped" snakes? Please feel free to share your stories in this thread. It could actually help some keepers here in finding their pets.

Credits to: Melomelochin and Zincubus for the idea to make this thread work!#notoplagiarism hahaha

Thank you for your replies! Happy Keeping!

Well, I'll start my own story on how did I lost and find my ball python. It was a busy day so far at that time. I went to handle my ball python that night and I spot-cleaned its enclosure, changed its water, checked the humidity and temperature, etc. When I put him back in its enclosure,I forgot to lock it and I went to bed. When I woke up, I went to school and back then I checked my ball python to see if he's okay. Then I was shocked that he was gone and I panicked for a bit. I know that he would not go anywhere because the room's door is closed and is anti-ball python escape xD. So I started thinking snake. If were a snake, where would I go? I would go to the darkest and the warmest place in the room so I found him between the wall and the cabinet. I learned at that time that I should double-check the lock of the enclosure.

Back when we used basic screen tops for some of our snakes, we had 4 escapes, leading us to transition to PVC enclosures, exoterras, and a couple Zilla slide tops.

Lily: our carpet python Lily made a break for freedom. My boyfriend woke me up at 3am in a panic. I followed toppled over items to the closet and found her on the top shelf, exploring away. She now has her very own T12.

Ezra: my big ol 4.5ft corn snake. She pushed the hinge in her 40g screen top up enough to slither on out of there. I figured it would be easy to find a large cornsnake, but found her after an hour of searching. She was curled up in the top drawer of our reptile supply cabinet, where I keep extra hides and decor. She now has a sliding top Zilla 40 gallon, with a T8 on order.

Mira: my little hoggie, maybe 40 grams at the time, managed to get out of the corner of her screen top after cage cleaning. I found my sweet little worm in the closet, curled up in a wooden crate, sleeping for the night. She now has a 30g short exoterra.

Loki: my first escapee, and the one that scared me the most. He was a wee tiny 20gram hatchling when he got out. With his small size, I was terrified because he could go anywhere. After hours of searching, I came up empty handed. A day later, I noticed the cats staring behind the washer. There was enough space for me to jam myself back there and look. The pipes for the water come out through the wall, which wasn't sealed up or blocked off, and I saw my little Loki man curled around the pipe. I was panicked, I couldn't reach him, could barely see him, and could feel the cold winter air coming through, as the pipes went down into the crawlspace beneath the house. I tried to lure him out with a nice warm pinky, to no avail. After a few hours, I decided to barricade off the washer, set up a bunch of plastic bottle snake traps filled with used miuse bedding around the pipe, and set up a heat lamp in an effort to keep my little guy warm. When my boyfriend woke up for work at 3am, he presented to me my tiny little cornsnake in a bottle, confused but alive and well. He had a small scratch on his neck, which I cleaned, dabbed a bit of antibiotic ointment on it, and placed him back in his home. He now has a 20g Zilla slide top. He'll be getting Ezra's 40g when her T8 arrives.

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Wow! That's a lot of escapes! Happy you got them back. Thank you for sharing your stories! Righly appretitate it :)

The more you have, the higher your chances of an escape. Hopefully people can learn from my mishaps with screen tops haha. We definitely learned the hard way. I'm just glad everyone was was found and unharmed! It's been worth the money to upgrade enclosures and know that everyone is safe.

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I hope they would learn something from you! Happy Keeping with your snakes! :)

My retic pushed the corner of his locking tub open enough to squeeze out of when I was resealing his cage. I got really lucky and found him under an old swivel chair that was in the corner. He was curled up under it on the floor sleeping lol. When I tipped the chair up and saw him, he just raised his head, looked at me and then laid back down and went back to sleep haha. I scooped him up and he didn't even bother moving. I put him in his cage and he crawled into his warm hide and went back to sleep. He was unaffected by it but I was traumatized as my thoughts were what if he crawled in the laundry room and got inside the dryer, washer or forced air heater. That would have been a major issue.

Funny part is I have put all my snakes in the same kind of locking tubs as I got one for each snake for if I have to move them in a power outage and none have ever gotten out. Caesar was the only one who did. He did take a huge piss in the tub though as when I opened it in the morning, all I saw was piss soaked pile of paper towels and his hide lol. Guess that gave him more incentive to push the corner of the lid up.

Nice story Sauzo! Thank you for sharing it to us! :)

I had a corn snake get loose once. It's tank was sitting on a shelf against the wall. It was missing for about 4 days. Finally found it wedged in between the wall and the shelf. I don't think my wife slept for the whole 4 days it was missing. That was the end of snakes for the remainder of the time we were married.

Haha good thing you found it after 4 days! Lucky your wife did'nt find it first or its a bad thing for you. xD Thank you for sharing your story! :)

I gotta admit I'm one of those distracted - head in the cloud - type of people and allowed more than one escape just by forgetting to close the tub / enclosure. Always been lucky and found them within a few hour at the most.

Just the other week I was playing online on the pc and saw my burmese python pushing on the glass of the enclosure so I opened him up. Something came up with the game and got caught with it. 10 minutes later I turn around and there's no sign of him. It shouldn't be hard to find a 6 ft snake in an apartment but it took me half an hour to realize he had curled up inside the rack beside his enclosure.

In my experience you'll generally find them in the closest crawl space to their escape point.

Thank you for sharing story Aste88! Next time, make sure to close your enclosure properly. Btw what PC game were you playing that time? Haha just curious xD. Happy Keeping! :)

:snake:

Took Gizmo out to clean her terrarium. I put her on my desk, and she climbed down under it, partly on top of computer and partly on top of subwoofer. Went back to cleaning, looked back 2 minutes later and she had vanished.
Searched the room, couldn't find her. Figured she'd turn up later and I'd spot her moving around. A few hours later, went to watch something on computer, and...the sound was all muffled. Looked down at the sub and saw

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...%2FA9Dglyo.jpg

As soon as my hand moved forward, the head pulled back in.

http://i.imgur.com/Fu8CkSw.jpg


I couldn't reach in and pull the snake out. Tried to irritate it into leaving, nothing. Playing music, knocking on the sides, turning it around. So I covered the hole and went to sleep. Next day, the snake was in exact same position and I realized it was stuck. So I had to slowly and gently push it all the way in. Then I had to get it out.

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...%2F8K0hTH0.jpg

Removed the grille, unscrewed the speaker, disconnected wires...and I still couldn't get it out! No way to reach it and grab it. Tried turning the speaker, shaking it...nada.

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...%2Fro5SUjh.jpg

So I turned the lights off, stayed quiet and eventually she crawled out on her own and I was able to put her back in cage.

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...%2FjdALqIP.jpg

Good thing you found him. How did he get there tho? Hehe thank you for sharing your story, with pictures! :)

I've never had any of mine escape from their enclosures. :snake:

But my normal het pied girl nearly got away from me one day while I was cleaning her tub. I left her on the scale for a moment while I was wiping it down, and by the time I turned back she was gone. It turned out that she'd climbed up behind my rosy boa's tank and slithered towards the window. I caught her when she tried to sneak through the blinds.

Mine have gotten out a couple times. User error. The first was the worse, my big girl got out and squeezed under the door to the snake room and was gone for a month or two. Then my dog found her under the hot water heater and it took another month to get her out from under it.

I fixed the door issue and since there is nothing in that room except the snakes, if one pops out it is found in under 5 minutes. Not many hiding places.

:cool:

Ours was in the piano! Took the thing apart, and there he was, safe and sound :)

I don't recall any ball python escapes, but I had a boa constrictor-corn snake double escape. I left the boa cage unlatched. (Dumb! Dumb!) She went out the door and up on top of the cage where I had an aquarium with a baby corn. The boa pushed the aquarium off. Glass everywhere. The boa couldn't go under the room's closed door. She was lying out on the floor when I went in the room. The corn could go under the door. She didn't turn up until I worked outward to a closet two rooms away.

When I was in high school, I kept some bullsnakes (Pituophis catenifer sayi). They were the best escape artists of any snakes I've had. One got out of his cage at one end of the house at night and was caught crawling over my father's tie rack at the other end of the house in the morning. Another spent the winter in the upstairs toilet and was caught coming out of the downstairs toilet. And I sighted a third escapee on the roof. Never did catch him though. I've gotten much better at cage building since then. :)

Haha thank you for sharing your stories bros and gals! :)

Ginger decided to go for a little romp, and was gone for 2 days. We found her underneath the stove, and boy was she lucky that I hadn't used the oven. She also apparently had a snack, judging by the bulge in her belly.


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Probably consumed a rat! Haha rat problem? Call Ginger. Haha xD Thank you for your reply. I appreciate it! Happy Keeping!

Believe it or not i've only had one escape and it happened a long time ago when my columbian red tail was a sub adult and in his old 60 gallon. One day i forgot to latch the screen down with the claps a woke up to find him climbing around my room knocking over everything. He was around 5-6 feet at the time so as i was trying to grab him the rest of him would grab on to something else. At the time i had vertical blinds he grabbed on to the main fixture and knocked the entire thing down. If you've never seen a full set of vertical blinds come crashing down with a boa constrictor attached them it's quite spectacular lol. When i got him back in his tank and everything was said and done my room was so wrecked lol and i just woke up so you can imagine how crazy and fast this all felt. But anyway i'm glad i had a chance to share this story.

Lost one for about 4 hours once, found him underneath the washing machine.

Glad to hear your stories guys! Seems like most of the keepers here lost their snakds because of carelessness xD

:snake:

I'm new to snake keeping. Ive had my baby girl Lilo about 3 weeks now. she's in a starter 20g screen top tank from petco at the moment. anyway i was just getting the hang of the humidity in the beginning and over did it with the humidifier (the tank got super foggy) so i opened the lid to vent it and then placed the lid back on and left her alone for a bit (she stays in my room and i try to keep the temps up in addition to her tank cuz its glass and its freezing some nights here in CT) anyway i came back a few hours later and checked on her but i didn't see her, i hoped she found a way to hide really well under the log- nope no Lilo. i freaked out since id had her only over a day! after i stopped and took a breath i was pretty sure she couldn't have gotten under the door so i started carefully looking everywhere i could think of. Found my princess under my closet door (stuck i suspect). learned to always double check the cage is closed, she's a real adventurer I'm sure if the door was open she would have explored further lol.

p.s. i felt so relieved when i read this thread and realised were all human and make mistakes. i really value this site and look up to a lot of you keepers. thanks for all the insight and helpful tips/ anecdotes/ etc!!

oh and love speaker escape pics

I forgot to lock the door to my room and my two year old invited himself in to play with the snakes. And of course he got out the most expensive one own, and of course he didn't put her back and secure the clips.

Didn't have trouble so much finding her; it a small room, she was just fed, and the rest of the house was p cold so she had no reason to leave it. Oh no, I knew exactly where she went to sleep, and that of course was the hardest possible place to get to: behind the big dresser that has my juvie tubs on it, and at the time had board games stashed underneath it. I had to get down on my belly and clear everything out, then reach in and grab blind. Which is the story of how I got my first tag lmao!

Its only happened once and it was my mother that made the mistake with my corn snake, she forgot she had her out and went swimming at the local community swimming pool. Halfway through she remembered and rushed home only to find her 1/2 down the hole for the radiator pipes.