One of my snakes died. Any thoughts on why?

[T&C Exotics]

I had checked on her earlier this morning and she was perfectly fine then I went to work and came home and checked on my snakes again and she was dead. She was just over 18 months old had a qt and everything when I first got her. When i checked her over for any signs of a cause of death I found a little blood on her mouth but there are no visible cuts or anything at all. My question is how could this have happened? The only thing I can think of is internal bleeding but what could have caused that if in fact that is the cause of death? Right now she is in the freezer and I am trying to find a vet that is less than 6 hours away from me who actually knows more about snakes than me. If I am able to do that I will have an autopsy done on her but other than that any thoughts on what could have caused it would be great. Just to give more back ground she last ate on Wednesday and ate perfectly fine, has fresh water every morning, bedding got changed 2 days ago and I use aspen. When I found her she was sitting in a ball as normal for her with her head under her body I just noticed she didn't look right so I took her out. She was in a 40gallon tank slider top temps were 82 cool side and 91 warm side because I just started lowering temps. Humidity was 74%. I have since taken that enclosure out of my snake room and it is outside right now so I can sanitize it. I think I covered everything. Oh there was a slight trace amount of blood in her mouth but not much there was a decent amount on her upper jaw right by the heat pits and it went down her mouth onto her lower jaw, kinda like when you blow a bubble with gum and it pops on your face, that kind of look to it. Thank you everyone for any information you can offer me.

Tom

[rthamilton]

Thats terrible,sorry for ur loss. Dunno if a RI would cause that but maybe thats what u should look into.

[T&C Exotics]

She had no signs of an RI I thought of that but any time I checked her she did not have any of the signs at all. Thank you for your thoughts though.

[Alice]

First of all, I am very sorry for your loss.

I hope your vet can help to identify the cause of death. Unfortuantely, freezing the snake might have eliminted the ability to do a necropsy (reptile autopsy). Let's hope you never have to figure out a cause of death in the future, but if you do, just put the snake in a ziploc and put it in the fridge, not the freezer and then get it to a vet ASAP.

[WingedWolfPsion]

I would suggest having a necropsy done, to be sure--a few possibilities:

If the snake wasn't checked for them, internal parasites may have caused a hemorrhage in the digestive tract.
Likewise, the snake may have had lungworm.
The snake may have had some other parasite that traveled through the body where it shouldn't, and perforated the lung or intestinal tract.

The snake may have been injured in a freak accident while eating, and perforated its esophagus.

The snake may have had one of those rare events--some sort of embolism, bleed, etc in the lungs, which led to death.

There are probably other possibilities as well. I'm sorry you lost the snake--it can be very hard to lose an animal suddenly that way.

[SGExotics]

I sounds like something internally was punctured or ripped and took its toll the day she died... Thats probably what they will find in the necropsy if you do one...

[Wh00h0069]

Sorry for your loss.

[T&C Exotics]

Thank you all for the information. The only vet even close to me that can perform a necropsy is over 5 hours away from me so I will not be able to do that but I do have a better idea now because of the information given to me. You have all been great with the information.

[Patricia]

So sorry to hear this.

[Angelique]

Why don't you do the necropsy? Perhaps your not an experienced surgeon, but looking inside may answer some questions for you.