I am very broken hearted today to tell everyone of the loss of my favorite snake Athena. She was a beautiful albino female that hatched 7/29/05 (that date being my wifes birthday) and sweet as a kitten since the day I picked her up from Delta dash. What the vet determined was she had something wrong with her imune system. She was suffering from her second RI within a year and my 17 other BP's never got anything. She was in the snakeroom controled by herstatpro for ambient(never under 79) and rack temps. The last infection was a type of ecoli(cultured) which the vets said is easily killed with bayatril injections. After the first round of injections she seemed to improve a little but last weekend she dumped her water bowl, got real conjested again so I started injections again and brought her back to the vet. We did another culture just too make sure, the vet was very surprised to see her worse and said if it turns to pnemonia she is in big trouble. He feels she has an imiunity disorder because she was kept in a very controled enviorment with 17 other BP's and she is the only one that got repeated RI's.
I realized after the second RI that she was never going to be a breeder but she was a great snake and I was happy to have her as a pet and would take care of her as needed. I have had her just about a year and now have to say good bye. I have three other lines of albino(she was the fourth) one male and two het females and am hoping I get a sweet girl like Athena to keep in memory of her. Thanks for listening to my depressed babbling.
Here are some pics of Athena
https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...seupAthena.JPG
https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...thenachair.jpg