Corny's Epic Escape, or: how spent my last 3 days worried sick

[tttaylorrr]

buckle in, friends: this is truly a SAGA.



so i'm posting this in General Herp as a way to share how i was able to track down my missing snake and all the tricks i used along the way. i hope this story is able to help anyone with a missing snake and what they can do to help recover them.

if there's two things i know about Corny, it's this: he loves to burrow and hide, and he loves food. i've talked about this on here before: i usually don't see Corny for a few days after feeding because he burrows himself away, and i've actually assumed he escaped once before, only to find him in his enclosure. so needless to say, this past Wednesday, a few days after feeding day and not seeing him and thinking nothing of it, i casually take a nice long look at his enclosure from across the room.

hm...

i get closer.

the middle latch is juuust lifted over the edge; the top was open.

i literally felt my heart stop.

i haven't seen him in days, so i actually have no clue when exactly he got out and how long its been. my timeline is now messed up; i can't take a guess at how far he could have gotten. i felt complete and utter hopelessness, but i sprung into action.

DAY 1:
my first step was checking my room (top floor). my room is small. nothing.

i checked around the hallway outside my room. nothing.

now, since my timeline got messed up from not seeing him, idk exactly where to look. i'm just blindly checking everything, with no rhyme or reason.

so now i start to think of ways to bring him to me: food. i set out his hides all around the top floor and thaw out 3 mice and place them at each hide. before i go to bed, i take a mouse and walk around the top floor, waving the bag and trying to waft the smell into every possible corner of the top floor. the next morning all "traps" are undisturbed, so this lead me to believe he was no longer on the top floor.

DAY 2:
i then move all "traps" to the main floor and set them about, this time with one heat pad set up with one. after work, upon checking things and no sign of Corny, i thawed out 2 new mice and set the "traps" up again (at this point i was committed to wasting every feeder i had until he was found). i walked around trying to search every nook and cranny i could, checking all the usual places (anywhere warm, behind the fridge, etc.). before i went to bed, i walked all around my main floor one more time with a thawed mouse wafting it at every single corner of the main floor i could. as i placed that mouse near one of the hides and made my way up to bed, my eye caught something on the stairs: POOP! there was poop behind a decorative plant in the corner on the landing stair right against the baseboard. my first evidence that Corny was no longer upstairs and, indeed, is now downstairs! A BREAK IN THE CASE!!! i felt like a detective! i picked it up and tried to analyze how long it had been there: the urates were already chalky but the poop wasn't totally dry, so probably a few days old.

i go to bed feeling a little better.

DAY 3:
in the morning i check all "traps" again and nothing was disturbed; no sign of Corny. this is where i start to really worry, because this could mean a few things: he's either not on the main floor and in the unfinished freezing basement (full of boxes and a million places to hide), or he's dead. Corny LIVES to eat, so leaving multiple mice out SHOULD have brought him out. this is where i really started to think about the basement.

when i get home from work i check all "traps" and find nothing. i finally decide to really focus on the basement. i thaw a weaned rat (i figured bigger prey=bigger smell) for the basement "trap" and a new mouse for the upstairs "trap". my dad and i then spend the next few hours checking the couches, the internals of our kitchen appliances, and we debated back and forth whether he actually would go into the basement or not. i was so torn about it, but i knew if he was in the basement, i had to find him fast.

as we keep searching upstairs, i occasionally go around the basement wafting the rat a couple more times to try and get the smell around.

so it's getting late, and i'm so worried i'm starting to feel ill. i keep telling my dad that i can't just sit back and wait, i have to do something. my dad then offers me one of his trail cameras to set up somewhere and see what we can get. at first i set it up on the main floor near the stairs (near where his poop evidence was; i figured he might return to the scene), but right before i was going to end my search for the night, i decided it needed to be in the basement. i asked him to come to the basement with me to make sure it was working and aimed at the "trap" properly. for some reason, we thought it wasn't "On" so we fiddled with it for a good 10 minutes before we decided to just walk away.

as we were headed upstairs, i decided to take just one more look around the basement.

as i turned the corner, there his ass was: on the concrete floor, coming out from behind a stack of boxes, looking no worse for wear.

i walk right up to him and burst into tears. he's so cold when i pick him up, but he was calm, tongue flicking, and just gripped me tight. i held him in my arms just crying hysterically. i walk him up to the main floor to look him over and try to warm him up. i just sat in a kitchen chair crying.

once i regain some composure, i walk him upstairs and put him in his enclosure. i gather his hides and put everything back together. he just casually cruises around like nothing's the matter; he took a biiiig drink. overcome with emotions and adrenaline, i proceed to text @Phillydubs and just blow his phone up with the quickest synopsis of this saga as i just HAD to tell someone. he was driving, so he called me and i again tried to explain these insane past 3 days. he gives me some great advice to turn the heat pad off and let him warm up gradually, and no not feed him right away. he also reassured me that i am, in fact, not the World's Worst Snake Keeper. we discussed the theory that maybe my cat might have forced him into the basement (where she is not allowed).



i didn't come on the forum right away and share what happened because i was 100% committed to finding him. there was no way in HELL i was going to quit for a second. i almost took off work to stay home and tear the house apart.

i'm a very big proponent of sharing the good AND the bad, and i hope that sharing my mistakes can help someone else.

all in all, i'd say the reason i found him was because i refused to give up, and i refused to be passive about this. i'd like to think i took a really good and tailored approach and, most importantly, i was successful. my Corny is a very food-driven snake, so i tried to appeal to that and get him to come to me with minimum of 2 feeders per floor (or one rat in the basement lol). but not only did i not just "set and forget" the feeders and take a passive approach, i walked around with them crouching low and wafting the smell into every corner of my house so he knew where to go, and when i saw no signs he was around, i moved on. if i had trusted my gut that he wasn't in the basement, who knows where we'd be right now.

guess who's buying the most expensive screen locks she can find today? me.

[richardhind1972]

So glad everything turned out well, I didn't find one of my corns for 7months so you was very lucky

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[Bogertophis]

i'd like to think i took a really good and tailored approach....

Awesome! I'm so happy you found him safely & fast! Most of us know that sick feeling when a snake gets loose...thanks for sharing & great job using
your tttaylorr'ed approach!

BTW, how big is Corny now? At least you didn't have to look for a hatchling! haha!

[tttaylorrr]

Awesome! I'm so happy you found him safely & fast! Most of us know that sick feeling when a snake gets loose...thanks for sharing & great job using
your tttaylorr'ed approach!

pun intended hahaha i'm just so incredibly relieved...these past three days have been nothing but sleeplessness and anxiety and sick feeling.

BTW, how big is Corny now? At least you didn't have to look for a hatchling! haha!

i haven't weighed him in a while but he's gotta be over 4.5ft maybe closer to 5. i have a picture of him when i put him back in his enclosure, but i'm also flipping him off in the photo so idk if i should share it lol.

[pretends2bnormal]

That's fantastic! So glad you found him safely and quickly. Wafting the smell around is a fantastic idea!

My one escapee was a graybanded king hatchling (11 grams) last year... best I can figure (then and now) is that he managed to squeeze out of a ventilation hole since that was the biggest gap in the cage. No other gaps in the tub and it was in a very tight DIY rack that we carefully inspected for any gaps, so not a lid issue or gap at the top. Same situation as yours where I hadn't been worried about seeing him for 2 days after feeding and discovering him missing.

We spent a few weeks tearing things apart and by then figured he was unreachable in the walls through one of the return vents near the reptile room (winter + heat on seems like a good hidey hole) or outside or had possibly died of dehydration. We had used food as bait, hides and water along walls, one with a regulated heat mat, and flour trails on all doorways... but never actually saw a sign of him until 4.5 months later when we found a perfect shed on the floor and him under a small automan 3 feet away.

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[Bogertophis]

When you're over the frustration you should write about this from HIS perspective, as in "Corny's Big Adventure". Your little boy is all grown up now.

Many years ago I got a yearling Everglades rat snake from a pet store (in Calif); he had escaped & eluded his previous owners for 3 months, & was
finally found OUTSIDE. At that point they decided they weren't "snake-keeping material" & returned him to the pet store, where he found me. The
store mgr. actually asked me to check him out as they'd not been able to handle him without defensive bites...I slid my hand right under his hide &
easily picked him up (whereas they'd been removing the hide -his safety zone- & scaring him with their approach) and the rest was hissstory. He
was a fine snake, beautiful orange, & lived many years with me.

[tttaylorrr]

So glad everything turned out well, I didn't find one of my corns for 7months so you was very lucky

i've read so many stories like that and honestly during all this i was like "that's not how my story turns out." i did EVERYTHING i possibly could ensure i wouldn't go into weeks or months.

ugh. i'm happy i can finally sleep well again, lol.

[tttaylorrr]

When you're over the frustration you should write about this from HIS perspective, as in "Corny's Big Adventure". Your little boy is all grown up now.

during the whole ordeal i was thinking "he's probably watching me right now from somewhere safe just hammin' it up at how stupid i am."

[Bogertophis]

during the whole ordeal i was thinking "he's probably watching me right now from somewhere safe just hammin' it up at how stupid i am."

Yup, with a little snakey smirk on his face, "You're playin' MY game now, human!" hahahaha!

[EL-Ziggy]

I'm so glad you found him. Way to be proactive! I left a tub uncovered the other day and was lucky my boa didn't escape.